CIC finds hills dug up in Mumbai; Green Min gets notice

In a first, apparent environmental degradation in Mumbai has been treated as a complaint by the Central Information Commission which has taken suo-moto notice and issued notice to the Environment Ministry to explain if the digging of hills in the city was permitted by it.

The smoke over Mumbai sky and digging of hills in the city, observed by Information Commissioner Sridhar Acharyulu, while on a visit to Mumbai, was treated by him as a complaint under the RTI Act making it a first such case, expanding the boundaries of the transparency law.

Sridhar, who was in Mumbai to address officials and scientists of Bhabha Atomic Research Centre, noticed some smoke over the hills in Mumbai near Airport, on February 27, 2015 while on Air India Flight.

While travelling further towards Department of Atomic Energy, Bhaba Atomic Research Centre, he noticed smoke spread over the sky which was also witnessed by the staff at BARC. The Commissioner also noticed that around a dozen hills were being dug by big earth movers with almost half of the hills were found cut.