Noida Authority to soon start imposing penalty on polythene usage

6/1/2017         Saurabh Kumar

The Noida Authority will now start imposing a penalty of Rs 5,000 on anyone found using a polythene bag of 40 micron or below thickness. Officials held a meeting with a group of vendors, who organize weekly vegetable markets across the city, and asked them to stop using plastic bags.

A group of seven vendors along with Noida authority’s additional chief executive officer Rakesh Kumar Mishra and senior project engineer Raghunandan Yadav, among other officers, took part in the meeting in Noida authority’s Sector 6 office. Meeting was called as many drains in the city are getting chocked because of plastic waste.

“We are making vendors, shopkeepers and others aware of the ban in the first round so that they do not protest when we impose a penalty. After issuing a warning, we will start imposing penalties and enforce the ban because plastic is harming the environment,” Raghunandan Yadav, senior project engineer of the Noida authority, said. The Noida authority will hold a meeting with shopkeepers next week in this regard.

On November 18, 2015, the Allahabad high court had directed the state government to issue a notification banning the sale of polythene in the state by December 31, 2015, due to its harmful effects on people’s health and environment.

As per the law, the authority staff can impose a penalty of 5,000 on those found using plastic bags thinner than 40 microns. If a person is found violating the ban a second time, the authority will impose a penalty of 500 per day from the first offence. A violation for the third time will lead to imprisonment of three months.