TheCentral Pollution Control Board(CPCB) has not carried out sampling for the comprehensive environmental pollution index (CEPI) since 2019. Industrial entities fromGujaratraised this issue with the Union Environment ministry.
Representatives from the Gujarat Chamber of Commerce and (GCCI) on Tuesday met senior officials in the ministry and raised the issues of CEPI sampling and hazardous Waste Management. GCCI said that the performance of common effluent treatment Plants (CETPs) in the state has improved over the last few year, but CPCB last carried out CEPI sampling in 2018 and after that had declared the Ankleshwar, Vapi, Vadodara,Vatva, Narol, Surat, Rajkot industrial clusters “critically polluted” and Bhavnagar as “severely polluted”. These classifications did not follow the revised CEPI guidelines of 2016.