Order of the National Green Tribunal regarding solid and liquid waste management in Sikkim, 16/01/2025
Order of the National Green Tribunal regarding solid and liquid waste management in Sikkim, 16/01/2025
Order of the National Green Tribunal in the matter of Compliance of Municipal Solid Waste Management Rules, 2016 and other environmental issues dated 16/01/2025. The court order was uploaded to the NGT site on 24/01/2024.
In the application, the tribunal is monitoring the issue of solid as well as liquid waste management as per orders of the Supreme Court. The tribunal after going through the report filed by Sikkim said that there was several deficiencies in the report and that the factual status was not reflected in the report.
For instance, the court said that there is no disclosure about the quantity of solid waste generated daily for each urban local body, its processing and the gap and time bound plan to plug the gap. With regard to remediation of the legacy waste site at Gangtok (Martam site), one lakh MT still remains which will be remediated by December, 2025. However, it is not disclosed on the characteristics of good earth and also total area reclaimed on account of clearing 1.29 lakh MT of waste. Details of gaps in waste processing, and assessment of legacy waste in ULBs should be disclosed in the next report, the court directed.
Further, processing methodologies adopted by each ULB and routing of products and the rejects/ residues to different destinations are not disclosed. In addition, the status of each of the urban local bodies should be reported in a specific format.
Again, when it comes to sewage management, the court pointed out that even though the estimated sewage generation in the state is reported as 40 MLD, but no ULB-wise details are provided in the report. Details of existing STPs for Gangtok have been provided but, no disclosure has been made about extent of households connected and unconnected households relying on septic tanks.
Further, the performance results of STPs are not provided. Likewise, the details of performance of mobile sewage treatment units (MTU), their technical features, performance and overall utility have not been provided. There is no disclosure of efforts made to adopt decentralized STPs (modular) for sparse populations.
The bench comprising NGT chairperson Justice Prakash Shrivastava and Justice Sudhir Agarwal directed that a fresh action taken report should be filed by the state of Sikkim covering the aspects pointed out by the NGT. The court would next hear the case on October 14, 2025.