Pollution penalties to fund new Environment Protection Fund: MoS

NEw new delhi: The amount of penalty imposed below the beam ( bar and verify of Pollution) Act, 1981; the Water (Prevention and Control of Pollution) Act, 1974 and the Environment (Protection) Act, 1986, on any person for contravening the provisions of the respective Acts, shall be credited into the Environment Protection Fund, Union environment ministry has informed the Lok Sabha.The Environment Protection Fund, 2026 provides the purposes for which it may be utilized.This includes the assessment and remediation of environmental damages and remediation of contaminated sites. Administrative expenses, not exceeding 5% of the amount available in the fund in a financial year may be used for payment of salaries and other emoluments of staff deployed in the project management unit ; necessary office equipment and furniture for the project management unit; and payment of auditors and legal or other professional services, said Kirti Vardhan Singh, minister of state for environment in response to questions by senior Congress leader, Shashi Tharoor.Tharoor had asked whether the government has assessed the potential conflict of interest arising from the Environmental (Protection) Fund Rules, 2026, under which penalties collected under the Air Act, Water Act and Environment (Protection) Act now finance regulatory and administrative functions. He had also asked whether the government has prescribed any mandatory mechanism under the Environmental (Protection) Fund Rules, 2026 to ensure that penalties collected from environmental violations are utilised for site-specific remediation and measurable ecological restoration.“Further, Section 17 of the erstwhile Environment (Protection) Act, 1986 was replaced Page 2 of 2 by section 15B, through the Jan Vishwas (Amendment of Provisions) Act, 2023, which provides the framework for penalising the offences committed by the Government Departments,” Singh added.In response to another question by AITC MP, Azad Kirti Jha on whether the Government has conducted any source identification and apportionment exercise for categorizing causes of air pollution with their relative contribution in Delhi-NCR and the country, as per recent Supreme Court guidelines, if so, the details thereof and if not, the reasons therefor; the reasons for not conducting such exercise earlier and whether meaningful solutions could be achieved without understanding the sources of pollution, Singh said Commission for Air Quality Management in National Capital Region and Adjoining Areas (CAQM) is taking a new approach.Based on the Source apportionment studies conducted across various cities, it was observed that major contributors to PM concentrations include road dust and construction activities (14–58%), vehicular emissions (10–33%), industrial sources (8–34%), and waste/biomass burning (8–29%). A Source Apportionment study for Delhi has been conducted in 2018 titled “Source Apportionment of PM 2.5 & PM10 of Delhi NCR for identification of Major Sources, Singh said.“Further, recognizing variations in earlier studies and the need for a unified, data-driven approach for developing effective air quality management in Delhi NCR, the Commission constituted a Steering Committee under the Chairmanship of a full-time Technical Member of the Commission, comprising Members from National Environmental Engineering Research Institute (NEERI), CPCB, NCR state pollution control boards, Automotive Research Association of India (ARAI), Pune, IIT Delhi and The Energy and Resources Institute (TERI). Based on the deliberations, CAQM developed a Framework for Emission Inventory and Source Apportionment for Delhi-NCR in April, 2025, which outlines high-resolution emission mapping (500 m x 500 m grid) across major polluting sectors like transport, industry, households, crop residue burning, road dust, and waste burning as outlined in this report,” Singh said.The Commission entrusted Central Pollution Control Board with the task to implement the framework, and a consortium of four institutes led by ARAI and partners from IIT Delhi, The Energy and Resources Institute (TERI) and Indian Institute of Tropical Meteorology (IITM) Pune has been awarded with the work of developing a new emission inventory and source apportionment study for Delhi NCR.