R Sedhuraman

Legal Correspondent

New Delhi, January 5

The Supreme Court today issued notice to Punjab on a plea for quashing the state government’s policy to provide free electricity to farmers.

The petitioner, Safal Bharat Guru Parampara, a Hoshiarpur-based NGO, has also sought a regulatory mechanism for restricting the number of tubewell connections and a complete ban on the eucalyptus plantation as part of measures to check the falling groundwater table.

A Bench comprising Justices MB Lokur and PC Pant directed the state government to respond to the NGO’s contentions that more and more tubewell connections were being sanctioned despite the fact that over-exploitation of groundwater in the state already stood at 80 per cent.

The NGO has come in appeal against the order of the National Green Tribunal (NGT) rejecting its plea for a directive to the state government to stop providing free electricity. The NGT said it had no power to interfere in policy matters. The tribunal also maintained that latest studies had shown that eucalyptus did not lead to environmental degradation.

Before deciding to entertain the appeal, the Bench asked the petitioner’s senior counsel Narender Hooda if any specific study had been conducted in Punjab. Hooda said the Central Groundwater Board, set up at the instance of SC under the Environment Protection Act, carried out a survey for 10 years, which showed that the water table had gone down by 73 per cent.

The NGT had wrongly come to the conclusion that the farmers would not misuse free electricity to waste the precious resource of groundwater in their own interest, Hooda pleaded. Water table had fallen to a critical level in as many as 45 blocks, warranting tubewell connections only for drinking water but the state government was allowing the facility even for irrigation, the petitioner pleaded.