Abstract

The judgment passed by Supreme Court in 2019 in case of Kantha Vibhag Yuva Koli Samaj Parivartan Appellants Trust and Others vs State of Gujarat and Others addresses the problem which arises when one of the four respondents which are Surat Municipal Corporation set up the landfill site at Khajod Village,Taluka Choryasi in the district of Surat. They started dumping unsegregated and untreated Municipal Solid Waste at that landfill. That District of Surat in which the landfill was set up was surrounded by thirty-five villages. Initially, on 24 January 2003, they started dumping 850 Metric Tonnes of waste per day which got doubled in just 10 years and went up to 1600 Metric tonnes of waste per day by 16 January 2014. Multiple warnings were given to Surat Municipal Corporation (SMC) by doing inspections and visiting the site but the situation did not improve. Dumping of waste also led to irreversible contaminations of local water bodies and groundwater and also caused severe air pollution due to the burning of waste and damaged the ecology of the villages that are situated nearby, moreover, it also affected the health of citizens and dumping waste like this without any prior treatment is violating the Municipal Solid Waste (Handling and Management) Rules 2000 & Bio-Medical Waste (Management and Handling) Rules 1998.

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