In the forest belt of North Kashmir’s Sopore area, solid and biomedical waste is being dumped illegally by the local authorities. This has been happening for the past two months and is violating many environmental laws. The forests are rich in biodiversity and host a number of migratory birds in winter. The dumping is not only affecting biodiversity but also the locals living nearby are also suffering, many are complaining of health issues.
“We were short of a dumping site, we’ve to select one, so we decided to put it there. Already, we’d stopped dumping at three sites, because of the local protest”, said additional deputy commissioner Sopore, Parvaiz Sajad Ganie.
“We cannot keep the dump in our houses anymore, we’re going to dump it there, if we get a direction from the court or other agencies we will stop it, ” he added further.
Deputy commissioner (Baramulla), Bhupinder Kumar, was unavailable for a comment.