KUMUD JENAMANI
Jamshedpur, Sept 26: A local environment protection activist has filed a PIL with the National Green Tribunal (NGT) against a Seraikela-based sponge-iron plant for causing pollution.
Concerned with the polluting unit, DD Steel & Power Ltd, the environmental activist Avdesh Kumar Pandey has demanded the NGT to close the company.
The sponge-iron plant in question is located at Mudia in Gamharia block of the Seraikela-Kharsawan district about 25 km away from the heart of the steel city.
Pandey has filed the PIL on the basis of the complaints from the scores of aggrieved villagers.
Due to the polluting smoke emanating from the sponge-iron plant, as many as five villages under the Mudia panchayat have been affected. Not only people living in surrounding villages are suffering from diseases having respiratory problems, but the water bodies in the villages have also turned grey due to the smoke and dust particles settling on them.
According to the environmental activist, the state pollution control board had in 2016 carried out an inspection of DD Steel & Power Ltd and had ordered for closure of the plant as the inspection team had found the company management flouting the pollution control norms.
“But after getting a company closure notice from the pollution control board, the company management had given a commitment that they would soon take necessary measures to check the pollution and had this way managed to save the company from getting shut down. But the pollution situation at the sponge-iron plant is more and less still the same, ” observed the environmental activist in the PIL.
After the information regarding the environmental activist’s PIL against DD Steel & Power Ltd spread in the Mudia panchayat, the villagers have become hopeful of getting rid of the polluting smoke in their surroundings soon.
