Alarmed over a report about poor ambient air quality inside its premises, Delhi high court on Thursday castigated its own concerned panel for not doing anything on the issue, saying it was “unacceptable” that everyone going there was at risk. Taking note of an air quality monitoring report filed by the Centre for Science and Environment (CSE), a bench of Justices Badar Durrez Ahmed and Sanjeev Sachdeva pulled up the court’s committee, asking what they were “doing till now.”
Referring to the report which said that the main lobby of the high court had more than 2.5 times the particulate matter than the safe standard, the bench said every day, thousands of people visited the court and “we all are at risk.”
“What is the plan of the Delhi high court maintenance and construction committee and what are they going to do? Your (maintenance and construction committee) report itself says that air quality is below safety level,” the bench said, adding that “no order or direction, no implementation, nothing has been done till date.”
“We think they should have done it by now. We request the maintenance and construction committee to carry out necessary work with regard to resolving of the poor air quality. The committee may be directed to carry out immediate steps during the summer vacation,” the bench said, adding that “we give this direction because the air level is beyond the safety level.” The direction came on a PIL which, apart from dealing with air pollution in Delhi, stated that the air inside the court premises was highly polluted, leading to health problems for lawyers, litigants, judges and court staff. The CSE report had also said that courtroom two — from where this bench functioned — was one of the most highly polluted areas in the court premises.
