Supreme Court asks NGT to fix chicken count in poultry farms

The Supreme Court on Monday directed the National Green Tribunal to reschedule poultry farms as thousands of egg and poultry farmers challenged the NGT’s decision to exempt less than 5,000 poultry farms from severe pollution. The Poultry Farmers and Breeders Association and the National Egg Coordinating Committee, through senior advocates Mukul Rohatgi and Arijit Prasad, have condemned the NGT’s order and alleged that the tribunal had in fact changed the policy guidelines by amending the Central Pollution Control Board’s guidelines. More birds had to obtain air, water and environmental clearances from the relevant pollution control boards.
Appearing before a bench of Justices DY Chandrachud and Surya Kant, Rohatgi said the NGT, even after arbitrarily lowering the threshold from 5,000 birds per 25,000 poultry farms, did not allow the aggrieved sector to cover it. The court passed the order after hearing the lawyer of the petitioner Gauri Moulekhi.
The bench in its order said that the main reason for filing the appeal was NGT. Poultry farmers’ representatives were not heard before the guidelines were passed on September 16, 2020 and December 10, 2021. “We give applicants the freedom to go to the NGT for a change of direction,” the bench said, but made it clear that it did not comment on the merits of the case.

The CPCB had earlier fixed the number of birds at 1 lakh for a poultry farm for environmental clearance. However, following the NGT’s 2017 directive, it revised the guidelines and set a limit of 25,000 birds for farms in August 2021. However, NGT has reduced the limit to 5,000 birds and all those who have more birds than the limit will have to take environmental clearance by January 1, 2023.