During the hearing of a case filed against IIT-Madras for pollution on the campus that was proving fatal for deer which grazed the waste, the Tamil Nadu Pollution Control Board submitted to the National Green Tribunal that plastic menace was rampant there. It submitted that IIT-Madras had not got any clearance for the construction of new buildings since 2006. During an inspection carried out recently, the pollution monitoring agency found several places where plastic waste had been dumped in large quantities, such as the Krishna gate and the Velachery gate.
In its submission before the NGT, the TNPCB said that because of expansion of buildings on the campus, waste generation had increased five fold. The biogas facility was found to be not in operation during the inspection.
In November, the main appellant in the case, Antony Clement Rubin, had drawn attention to reports on how ingesting plastic had killed many deer on campus. Based on an RTI application, Mr. Rubin had found that 220 deer died in the last three years on the IIT-M campus. Alarmed by the report, he then filed a case before the NGT in May this year. The appellant sought a ban on use of plastic inside the ecologically sensitive campus, and shifting the location of the college festivals Saarang and Shaastra to outside the campus to reduce the stress on the campus during the festivals.
IIT-Madras sought two weeks’ time to file its counter. The case has been posted for August 7.
