Govt. reconstitutes Environment Pollution Authority

Union Ministry of Environment, Forests and Climate Change (MoEFCC) has reconstituted Supreme Court-empowered Environment Pollution (Prevention and Control) Authority (EPCA).

• This comes after tenure of the last EPCA expired on October 3, 2018.

Details:

• Former IAS officer Bhure Lal will continue to be Chairman of reconstituted EPCA.
• The other members of the 20-member re-constituted EPCA include Ajay Mathur, Director General of The Energy Research Institute (TERI); Arunabha Ghosh, Chief Executive Officer of Centre for Energy Environment and Water; Navroz K. Dubash, Senior Fellow for the Centre for Policy Research.
• Others members include Vishnu Mathur, Director General, Society of Indian Automobile Manufacturers; Krishna Dhawan, Chief Executive Officer, Shakti Sustainable Energy Foundation, New Delhi and Arvind Kumar, former professor of surgery, AIIMS in New Delhi and among others.

About the Environment Pollution Control Authority (EPCA):

• EPCA is Supreme Court mandated body tasked with taking various measures to tackle air pollution in the National Capital Region.
• It was notified in 1998 by Environment Ministry under Environment Protection Act, 1986.
• Its mandate is to protect and improve quality of environment and prevent and control environmental pollution in National Capital Region.
• It is also mandated to enforce Graded Response Action Plan (GRAP) in NCR as per the pollution levels.
• In November 2017, EPCA had enforced several measures, including ban on brick kilns, closure of Badarpur thermal power plant, hot mix plants and stone crushers, and construction activities in NCR.

Question:

Q. Which Supreme Court-empowered authority has the Union Ministry of Environment, Forests and Climate Change (MoEFCC) reconstituted?
a. Habitat Pollution (Prevention and Control) Authority (HPCA)
b. Ecological Pollution (Prevention and Control) Authority (EPCA)
c. Environment Pollution (Prevention and Control) Authority (EPCA)
d. None of the above