Gurgaon: National Green Tribunal (NGT) has issued a notice to ministry of environment, forest and climate change (MoEFCC) over a matter pertaining to industrial effluent. A petition, filed by environment activist Narender Sirohi, has sought a statutory overhaul of existing safeguards governing industrial effluent management and zero liquid discharge (ZLD) compliance and flagged what the petitioner calls a glaring contradiction in govt notifications.The petition hinges on a direct conflict between two govt instruments (legal/administrative tools used by govt branches to govern). Counsel for the petitioner, Sanjaya Kumar Mishra, told the tribunal that the two instruments are irreconcilable.On Oct 5, NGT’s principal bench asked the respondent to file its reply by way of affidavit through e-filing at least one week before the next date of hearing — Jan 21, 2027. The petitioner has been directed to serve the respondent and file an affidavit of service within the same timeframe. The bench, comprising chairperson Justice Prakash Shrivastava and expert member Dr Afroz Ahmad, found that the matter raised “substantial issues relating to compliance with environmental norms”.An office memorandum (OM), issued by MoEFCC on Jan 28, categorically bars the transportation of industrial effluent to common effluent treatment plants (CETPs) by tankers or any vehicular means, mandating instead that it flow exclusively through dedicated pipeline networks. But an MoEFCC notification dated Sept 9, 2024 — still in force — actually lays down operating protocols for tanker-based effluent transport to CETPs, including requirements for GPS tracking, real-time monitoring and quality checks on arrival.Mishra argued that the Jan 2026 OM, being the more protective instrument, must prevail — and that it needs to be backed by a statutory notification to give it legally enforceable teeth, rather than remaining an administrative order that can be quietly circumvented.The petition also takes direct aim at a practice it says has hollowed out ZLD requirements. It asks the tribunal to direct MoEFCC to stop granting amendments to environmental clearances that dilute ZLD conditions — particularly amendments that allow industries to route treated effluent into agriculture, horticulture, landscaping or plantation uses, effectively bypassing the discharge prohibition at the heart of the ZLD norm.ZLD mandates that industrial units recycle and reuse all their wastewater internally, releasing no liquid effluent into the environment. Critics have long argued that permitting treated effluent to be diverted to fields or gardens defeats this purpose.The third prayer in the petition asks NGT to direct MoEFCC to set up a national online platform for public reporting of environmental violations and grievance redressal.In support, the counsel cited a Supreme Court order, dated Aug 7, in a high-profile suo motu case — regarding the matter of 2 million lives at risk — Contamination in Jojari river, Rajasthan. In that matter, the apex court had directed Rajasthan to establish an integrated public reporting and environmental grievance redressal mechanism, complete with a QR code-based digital portal that would allow citizens to report illegal effluent discharge, unauthorised industrial operations, illegal groundwater extraction, riverbed encroachments and hazardous waste dumping — with confidential reporting, a unique complaint number and immediate forwarding to jurisdictional authorities including the State Pollution Control Board, district administration, police and forest department.The petitioner argued that such a mechanism should not be confined to Rajasthan. He also drew the tribunal’s attention to a Jan 30, 2025 SC direction in the Vellore district environment monitoring committee case, where the court had instructed Tamil Nadu’s State Pollution Control Board to establish citizen-facing platforms for reporting pollution incidents and tracking corrective action. That norm, he submitted, must be extended nationally.
