Cross words

* WHEN Delhi industry minister Harsharan Singh Balli announced the formation of a panel to resolve the vexed issue of shifting polluting industries, he also spoke of fostering another industrial revolution in the Capital -- and granted ad hoc licences to illegal factories.

* THE ministry of environment and forests has delighted in performing the ostrich act. Though it has written umpteen times to the Delhi Administration seeking the relocation of polluting industries, no action has been taken.

* THE Central Pollution Control Board (CPCB) says pollution control devices must be installed in factories before shifting them. The Delhi Pollution Control Committee, on the other hand, maintains that installing pollution control devices in unauthorised units and in non-conforming areas would amount to an incentive and an oblique recognition of their existence.

* THE DPCC blames the Municipal Corporation of Delhi (MCD) for the mushrooming of these units. Says I K Kapila, environment engineer with DPCC, "Factory owners skip obtaining the 'mandatory' consent from the committee before setting up a unit and instead procure a licence from the MCD, on the basis of which the Delhi Electricity Supply Undertaking gives a power connection." MCD officials, however, claim that the unit owners procure licences for non-polluting industry and later set up a different unit.