The Supreme Court steered the National Green Tribunal to fix afresh the poultry farm fowl restrictions, as score of egg and chicken farmers challenged the NGT‘s arbitrarily lowering the edge to 5,000 from 25,000 birds per poultry farm from strict pollution norms.

Poultry Farmers and Breeders Association and National Egg Coordination Committee (NECC) faulted the NGT’s order alleging that the tribunal undertook framing of coverage choice by altering the properly-researched guideline of Central Pollution Control Board, which specified that farms with greater than 25,000 birds have been required to take air, water and environmental clearances from the respective pollution management boards.

The bench mentioned the principal cause for submitting of the appeals is that the NGT had not heard representatives of poultry farmers earlier than passing the instructions on September 16, 2020 and December 10, 2021. “We grant liberty to the petitioners to move the NGT seeking modification of the directions,

It is to be noted that poultry sector in India, valued at about Rs 80,000 crore, is broadly divided into two – a extremely organised industrial sub-sector with about 80% of the whole market share and the opposite being unorganized with about 20% of the whole market share of Rs 16,000 crore.