CPCB failed to recover fines from Reliance, Adani Groups in last 30 years

Ground Report | New Delhi: CPCB or the Central Pollution Control Board is known as the prominent and the highest pollution controlling body in the country. It is believed to be responsible for the matters of environmental pollution control, allocation of funds, designing of policies, and recovery of funds.

CPCB failed to recover fines from Adani Groups and others

However, the Board had been found unsuccessful in recovering fines that were ordered by the court. This shows the lack of sincerity and responsibility on the hands of the CPCB board as many consider the act of winning the case filed to obtain fines from such luxurious private companies as mere the only task while the collection of the fines on the order of the court is meant to serve in a silver platter to the board. 

The problem is rooted in the dark side that the responsible agencies don’t act on for years when the private companies fail to pay fines, and this is the reason responsible boards such as CPCB fails to collect fines for 30 years from companies like coca-cola, reliance or Adani even after winning the court battles as these companies use the loopholes of the system, and lazy and careless action by such agencies to gain personal benefit. 

Down to Earth, a trustable organization has revealed that the highest pollution controlling board failed to collect fines from renowned private companies for thirty years.

In an RTI filed by DTE, CPCB disclosed that it is not aware of how much fines is to be collected, that is ordered by the supreme court and on the cases that were dealt with by several high courts between the year 1990-2022. On the other hand, CPCB also revealed that till now under NGT’s various orders only a sum of 583 crore rupees has been collected as a fine.

However, they didn’t disclose the actual amount of environmental fines that were collectively required to be collected by them, they don’t even have the information regarding the amount from fines to be collected by the cases registered in various courts that ordered the collection of fines in their favour.

Fines to be collected

• Coca-cola is fined rupees 506,631,100.  National Green Tribunal on 10th September 2020 fined M/s Hindustan beverage Coca-cola limited with rupees 51 crores under the Plastic waste management act.

• Pepsico India has been fined rupees 89,700,000.  NGT on the same date in 2018 fined Pepsico India with other companies with rupees 8 crores 97 lakh under the Plastic waste management act. 

• Adani Group has been fined rupees 500,00,000. The NGT had ordered the payment of an interim fine of Rs 5 crores to the Central Pollution Control Board as part of the polluter pay principle against the Adani Group’s M/s Udupi Power Corporation Ltd.

• Reliance has been fined rupees 79 Crores. Reliance Industries has been found as the cause of pollution of Singrauli area in Madhya Pradesh led the NGT to impose a total fine of Rs 79 crores on companies operating coal mines and coal-based power plants in the severely polluted Singrauli region.

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