Plastic bags a bigger threat than N-bomb: SC

'Must Examine Ban Or Order Proper Retrieval'

New Delhi: Excessive use of plastic bags and their unregulated disposal has been choking lakes, ponds and urban sewerage systems, the Supreme Court said on Monday while warning that it posed a threat more serious than the atom bomb for the next generation. 

    This observation from a bench of Justices G S Singhvi and S J Mukhopadhaya came on a PIL filed by two Andhra Pradesh-based NGOs drawing the court's attention to 30-60 kg of plastic bags recovered from the stomachs of cows. 

    The court issued notice to the Centre and state governments on the PIL, which has sought a ban on the use of plastic bags in municipal areas which did not have a prompt garbage collection, segregation and disposal system. The NGOs said the absence of such a system allowed cows to consume foodstuff dumped in plastic bags, which then get stuck in their stomach. 

    But the bench wanted to address the larger questions arising from the indiscriminate use of plastic bags, which not only posed a grave threat to the environment but also to the human race itself. It suggested that the petitioner make the manufacturers and a TV channel, which has been running a campaign against the use of plastic, parties to the PIL for wider scrutiny of the important issue. 

    "All of us are watching how our lakes, ponds and urban sewage systems are getting choked by plastic bags. We want to expand the scope of this petition. Unless we examine a total ban on plastic bags or put in place a system for manufacturers mandating them to collect back all plastic bags, the next generation will be threatened with something more serious than the atom bomb," the bench said. 

Year after Binayak, Red leader charged with sedition gets bail 

New Delhi: The Supreme Court on Monday granted bail to Naxal leader Narayan Sanyal (78) more than a year after it had ordered release of Dr Binayak Sen in the sedition case in which both were convicted by a Raipur court in Chhattisgarh. 

    If the mindless violence, kidnappings and killings in Naxal infested areas were taken note of by the apex court, it also factored in grant of bail to Dr Sen (61), whose conviction and rejection of bail plea by Chhattisgarh HC had created a frenetic coverage and debate in media. The SC bench asked Chhattisgarh to show if Sanyal was accused of any heinous crime warranting rejection of his bail plea and said mere propagation of ideology which is not palatable to majority might not be a good ground to deny the man parity in law. TNN