The National Green Tribunal (NGT) on Friday started a suo motu case on land subsidence at Belgachia dumping ground and adjacent areas under Howrah Municipal Corporation (HMC) and sought action-taken-report (ATR) from the state government and the HMC.
The tribunal has directed the government to submit the ATR on the dumping ground of 100 bigha land, where Howrah city’s municipal waste have been dumped for years, by 23 May.
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The division Bench of the NGT today expressed concern after seeing photos of the land subsidence at Belgachia, triggering cracks on walls of houses and roads in the local areas.
It’s also learnt, the tribunal has also sought clarifications from the HMC seeking to know why the civic body is sitting idle on its earlier directive to shift the dumping ground to elsewhere from Belgachia.
Earlier, the NGT had directed the HMC to earmark a separate site in Howrah city for disposal of municipal wastes. The civic body was directed by the tribunal to complete the process of shifting the dumping ground from Belgachia to elsewhere by 14 February. But nothing is done so far in this regard, it’s learnt.
The CPI-M unit in Howrah this afternoon organised a protest march to HMC headquarters this afternoon, demanding immediate holding of civic polls in Howrah. The elections in the HMC are due since 2018 and a board of administrators, headed by Dr Sujay Chakraborty, a paediatrician in the city, has run the civic body for the past six years.
The agitating CPI-M workers also alleged that the land subsidence at Belgachia and adjoining areas caused severe disruptions in basic civic facilities starting from supply of drinking water, electricity and food but these issues were not addressed as there is no elected civic board in Howrah. They demanded immediate rehabilitation of affected residents at Belgachia.
Water supply has already been restored in Belgachia, Bally, Liluah, Salkia, Shibpur and other parts in central Howrah since Wednesday.
The situations in the affected areas in Shibpur had aggravated further since Monday after the sewerage system surrounding the dumping ground collapsed following Thursday’s land subsidence during repair work in the pipeline connecting an underground reservoir at the wastes disposal site.
