Manali MC goes to High Court to appeal NGT’s Rs 4.6 cr fine

Abhinav Vashisht

Kullu, June 19

The Municipal Council (MC), Manali, has filed an appeal in the Himachal Pradesh High Court regarding a penalty of Rs 4.6 crore imposed by the National Green Tribunal (NGT) on it on May 29 for contaminating the Beas. The untreated leachate, discharged from a waste management plant at Rangri in Manali, has polluted the river.

Manali MC President Chaman Kapoor said the operations of the waste management plant had been outsourced to a private company seven years ago.

The president added that as per the agreement, the company had to treat the waste and generate electricity from the refuse derived fuel (RDF). He said while the company was making RDF, it had not installed the machinery for the waste-to-energy plant yet. Several notices had been slashed upon the firm and now its agreement would be cancelled.

He said 30,000 tonnes of the 40,000 tonnes of legacy waste had been removed by another firm, but again another heap of waste had piled up as the inflow of garbage was enormous.

The MC Chief said it would not be possible to adjust garbage from other areas as the facility at Rangri was already overburdened and as per a meeting held with the Kullu DC on March 21, the waste from other areas would not be accepted at Rangri after June 21.

He said even earlier, the MC had sent letters to the civic bodies of Kullu, Bhuntar and Banjar, asking them not to send garbage to Manali after December 1, 2022. However, the waste of these and many other areas continued to be sent to the Rangri plant after the intervention of the district administration. He added that now waste from many areas of Lahaul was also being dumped in the plant.

The plans of the Manali MC to generate electricity from garbage by setting up a waste-to-energy plant have been lingering on for years. The idea was conceived during the tenure of the previous elected body headed by Roop Chand Negi, whose term had ended in 2015. The plant could have solved the herculean issue of the municipal waste.

At present, the waste from many areas of Kullu was being sent to the RDF plant in Manali by paying Rs 1 per kg to the Manali civic body as most of the urban and rural areas were not having adequate waste management systems.

Following an order issued by the NGT on June 19, 2017, and protests carried out by locals, the dumping of waste was stopped at a yard in Pirdi near Kullu town from January 2, 2019.