Vellore District Environment Monitoring Committee rep. by its Secretary Mr. R. Rajendran Vs. The District Collector and Ors. Country/Territory India Type of court National - higher court Date Jan 28, 2010 Source UNEP, InforMEA Court name High Court of Madras Judge Elipe DharmaraoPaul Vasanthakumar., N. Language English Subject Water, Land & soil, Waste & hazardous substances Keyword Precautionary principle Hazardous substances Polluter pays principle Water supply Effluent waste water/discharge Liability/compensation Potable water Abstract The judgement deals with two writ petition filed in the High Court of Madras regarding alleged inaction in part of certain tanneries in the State of Tamilnadu for the prevention of pollution. This case was initially filed as a Public Interest Litigation in the Supreme Court of India, which asked the Madras High Court to constitute a special bench, called the Green Bench and issued comprehensive directions to deal with the problem of the ecological damage as well as individual losses of life, crop et cetera faced due to the activities of the tanneries which are responsible for ‘enormous discharge of untreated effluents into the river Palar (Power given under Section 3(3) of the Environmental Protection Act, 1986). The Court decided to use the "precautionary principle" and the "polluter pays" principle, and came up with certain measures in order to assure that the damage that has already been caused is minimized and undone, as well as, compensation being made available to the affected individuals. Thereafter, with specific instructions of implementations on these measures the Supreme Court conferred the required powers on the Special Bench of the Madras High Court, constituted for the purpose. Some of the measures were: The tanneries were to be directed to pay compensation and where they fail to do so, their closure may be carried out by the assigned authorities; They were also required to adhere to specific standards of pollution control and install devices to that end, the failure to do which by a specific date would result in a direction of closure. Initially, some of these companies contested the fact that they had to pay any compensation at all. However, later they changed their plea and while agreeing with the quantum of the compensation assigned, requested that they be allowed to pay the huge amount in instalments. This was allowed to them keeping in mind the interests of both affected parties. At this stage, the write petition in question was filed praying for a writ of Mandamus for (1) the implementation of pollution control measures and closure of industries as they hadnt carried out any of the directions issued to them for the purpose of pollution control and (2) payment of compensation to affected families which as per the contention of petitioners, AISHTMA had not been done. The Madras High Court quashed the petitions based on these conditions, the reasons for which have been given ahead. One of the contentions that no compensation had been paid by the parties at fault was not true. As the polluters had abided by the directions of the Authorities and paid the compensation amount which was now lying as the ‘Environmental protection fund. However, the contention of the petitioners was true in so far as their allegations that the compensation had not been distributed to the aggrieved individual parties. But, the petition fails as they had not even taken into the account some of the partial, and some complete compensation amounts that had been made available to the ryots. Also, their contention that absolutely no pollution control measures had been taken and that the industries should thus be shut down was also ill-founded as there was material placed on record to prove that all the tanneries had atleast Reversis Osmosis Plants in place, and several other measures. So, both petitions in this regard were squashed by the High Court of Madras. Full text COU-156177.pdf Website indiankanoon.org