Air Pollution Law

India legal news reports indicate that all’s not fizzy with Coca-Cola in Kerala. The company is facing a serious legal charge in Kerala. The Kerala government will soon set up a tribunal to recover Rs.216.26 crores from the world famous soft drink giant. The amount is sought as a compensation, for environmental harm and violation of environmental laws, by the company. The damage was caused because of their bottling plant and it affected the people of a village called Plachimada of Palakkad district. The company is reported to have caused serious environmental harm through its bottling plant, which is already closed, following sustained protests and stand taken by the court. The state government’s cabinet decided to set up the tribunal based on the report submitted by a panel headed by K. Jayakumar, the Additional Chief Secretary.

Almost 25 years later after India’s worst industrial disaster, India legal news reports that a court in Bhopal has delivered the verdict in the Bhopal gas tragedy case.  All the eight accused in this case have been convicted and found guilty by the court. The accident took place on 2^nd December 1984, and is attributed to the failure of safety systems, which allowed forty tones of the poisonous methyl isocyanate from the Union Carbide plant, to mix with water at a high temperature. Slum dwellers were the worst affected people in this devastating tragedy. The official number of deaths according to the State Government was 3, 787. However, it is reported that about 20,000 people died and 5.7 lakh people were injured in the Bhopal gas tragedy, making it the world’s worst industrial disaster!

In the recent times, noise pollution has become a serious health hazard to all living beings, be it humans or animals. The Government of India has developed Noise Pollution (Regulation and Control) Rules, 2000, to overcome the issue of noise pollution. The rules include setting up the Ambient Air Quality Standards, which specifies different permissible levels of sound (measured in dB (A) Leq*) for different areas: