A week after Howrah’s Belgachia dumping area cave-in, the eastern bench of the National Green Tribunal has asked the Howrah Municipal Corporation to file a status report on the matter by May 23. It has also directed environment activist and Howrah resident Subhas Datta, who has been on this case for three decades, to submit an affidavit with documents in this connection.
The case was heard suo moto by the tribunal on the basis of media reports, making the state urban development and municipal authorities, Howrah Municipal Corporation and the overall government of West Bengal parties to the case.
March 21 disaster
The Belgachia bhagar area (garbage dumping ground) suffered a major disaster on March 21. Roads suffered cracks and about a hundred houses collapsed due to land subsidence as the region – spread over 100 acres – could not withstand the pressure of unscientifically heaped garbage for over the last seven decades. It is said that nearly half of the area has been encroached upon.
Suo moto court intervention
“Today the bench of Justice B. Amit Sthalekar and expert member Arun Kumar Verma has taken up the Howrah waste matter suo moto on the basis of media reports in the aftermath of the waste dumping area’s subsidence, that has highly disoriented the civil services such as drinking water supply or waste management in the city, and also made many occupants of the area losing their shelters. The court has directed HMC to submit a status report on waste management of the city and asked me to file an affidavit and supply documents” Datta was quoted as saying.
Datta shared several recent photographs that highlighted the status of waste management in the city, including the Belgacha dumping ground.
During a hearing on December 3, 2024 over a PIL filed by Datta earlier in April last year, the tribunal had warned that the Howrah civic body’s senior officials may face penal consequences and said, “The Commissioner, Howrah Municipal Corporation, is absolutely slack in discharge of his duties, so far as environmental violations are concerned.”
In the December order, the bench had referred to a Supreme Court order that says a fine and even a jail term may be imposed against those who fail to comply with NGT directives.
In a subsequent order on February 14, 2025, the bench had directed HMC to remove all the scattered waste kept on city roads “within a period of one month” and submit the report within April 15, 2025. The bench also warned the civic body about a “serious view … being taken” against it if the bench’s order about garbage management is not strictly complied with.
A legal history
Chief minister Mamata Banerjee had earlier expressed concern about the accumulating garbage in Howrah.
Howrah’s overall waste management and the Belgachia dumping issue have a long legal history as the matter was referred by Datta at the Supreme Court in 1995. On April 16, 1996, Justice Kuldip Singh, in a Supreme Court order, created a green bench in the Calcutta high court and asked Datta to report the matter to the bench. It was the first such bench in the country.
On April 16, 2003, the Calcutta high court had asked HMC to stop the dumping of waste in Belgachia and find an alternative dumping site within six months. Back then, the high court bench had ordered “the corporation to remove all encroachments and to clean the trenching site so that the same is free from pollution and other health hazards.”
“Nothing has been done in the last three decades and the consequences are all there to see. It reflects the gross failure of successive state governments and municipal authorities to act on the issue,” said Datta.
“We are trying everything possible and pragmatic and plan to turn the area green after biomining of legacy waste like what we did in Dhapa,” said a senior urban development official.