Uttarakhand Environment Protection and Pollution Control Board, responsible for controlling air and noise pollution on normal days as well as on special days like Deepawali, appears to have failed to firmly deal with the menace of air and noise contamination due to reckless bursting of firecrackers on the occasion of the festival of light. The officers of the board admitted that they could hardly do anything with the Government allowing the sale of firecrackers through issuing licenses.
“We are helpless. We cannot do anything as long as the administration chooses to be lenient on the matter. Our role merely boils down to measuring the level of the pollution and send the report to the authority concerned,” said a senior officer of the board.
“We are, however, conducting awareness campaign in consonance with various departments all the year round, asking the people to desist from bursting firecrackers in the interest of all as we would collectively suffer in case the pollution level assumes alarming proportions,” the officer said.
Many say that the board has failed to keep the level of air and noise pollution to the normal range on a normal day. “Given this sorry state of things, how can we expect that they would curb things that Deepawali celebration unleashesIJ” asked a senior citizen residing on Rajpur Road.