Shimla:The Tourism Department has begun implementing the High Court’s orders to rid Himachal Pradesh of plastic and other types of waste. The department will soon require tourists from other states to bring garbage bags with them when visiting Himachal.
Preparations are underway to make garbage bags compulsory for tourists visiting Himachal Pradesh. The Himachal High Court has ordered the Tourism Department to implement this to make the state plastic and garbage free. On the court’s order, the Tourism Department will soon issue a notification within a week, in which garbage bags will be made compulsory for every tourist vehicle.
After this, there will be a provision to impose a fine on those tourists who do not have garbage bags in their vehicles. The division bench of Justice Trilok Chauhan and Justice Sushil Kukreja said that along with the tourists, it will also be the responsibility of the tour operator, travel agency and the driver to inform the tourists coming to Himachal about garbage bags. The Tourism Department will also make tourists aware about this.
Every year one to one and a half crore tourists visit various tourist places in Himachal Pradesh. This year two crore tourists are expected to come. Some of these tourists spread dirt on the mountains and throw food items, plastic, liquor, beer bottles etc. here and there. The court has taken strict cognizance of this during the hearing of a petition. Now the next hearing in this case has been scheduled for August 1.
The court has also ordered the state government to form a task force to make the state plastic waste free. The court has ordered the formation of this special task force comprising members of Municipal Councils, Municipal Corporations and Nagar Panchayats, Secretaries of District Legal Services Authorities, Tourism Development Corporation, Forest Department, NGOs and other stakeholder bodies etc.
This task force will focus on cleaning the garbage spread on the hills, especially plastic waste. It will be known as Special Task Force (STF). The state government has to form the task force by August 1. The court has made the secretaries of each District Legal Services Authority as coordinators to monitor the implementation of the directions given by the High Court in this regard.
They have been ordered to prepare a monitoring report on the cleaning of plastic waste hotspots and water streams as per the orders of the High Court and discharge of roles and responsibilities of various stakeholders under the solid waste management laws to ensure a clean and pollution free environment and submit it before the court every three months.