Court withholds security deposit until further orders
PANAJI
The Bombay High Court at Goa has directed that the security deposit Rs 1.10 crore furnished by Percept Ltd, the organisers of Sunburn EDM music festival be not released to the organisers until further orders even as the High Court granted more time, until April 25 to the organisers to file their affidavit concerning the alleged illegalities in the grant of permission for the event.
Earlier, the Chief Secretary in an affidavit before the Court had admitted that the permissions were granted to the Sunburn organisers for their event, within 24-hours of the application being submitted in gross violation of rules.
In his affidavit, the Chief Secretary Puneet Kumar Goel had said that as per the guidelines for such an event, the organiser company should have applied before SDM for sound permission but instead wrongly applied for a sound NOC before the Goa State Pollution Control Board on December 5.
The application for sound permission was finally applied on December 27 which was granted within 24 hours that is on December 28.
Similarly, application seeking NOC was applied before the Sub-Divisional Police Officer on December 27 and it was granted on December 28.
This is the second adjournment granted to the organisers to explain the deficiencies by the organisers in applying and receiving permissions for the event.
The Chief Secretary has also told the court that the Sub Divisional Magistrate and the Sub Divisional Police Officer granted permissions for the event within 24 hours in gross violation of rules.
The top bureaucrat contended that the District Magistrate justified the grant of permissions in haste since they were in a difficult situation as non-organisation of the event would have resulted into total chaos as lakhs of people had come to Goa to attend the event.
The CS has submitted that rampant violations of sound permissions were committed by the organisers due to non-coordination between SDPO and GSPCB. SDPO has submitted that Police could not take action against sound permission violations as policemen were busy managing crowd and traffic.
The Bombay High Court had asked the Goa government to explain the process behind the grant of permission to hold the Sunburn Music Festival at Anjuna in the final week of December last year after the Court smelled a rat in the process to issue permission. “The petitioner, respondent no.10 [Sunburn] and the Deputy Collector who has issued the permission dated 28.12.2022 under the Noise Pollution Rules must file affidavits giving full details about the application and how the same was processed. Necessary copies must also be annexed to the affidavit,” the High Court bench of Justices M S Sonak and Valmiki Menezes said.
The High Court noted how “permission was granted on 28.12.2022 based upon the application which was inwarded only on 27.12.2022.”
“The Chief Secretary should also look into the process by which permission was granted on 28.12.2022 based upon the application which was inwarded only on 27.12.2022. The Chief Secretary should look into the notification dated 05.01.2022 containing the Department of Environment and Climate Change action plan in the context of the Noise Pollution Rules. The Chief Secretary must report on the officers who were involved in this process of grant of permission,” the High Court said.
The High Court is hearing a petition filed by one Rajesh Sinary, who in his petition alleged that music above the permitted limit was played on all the three days by the organisers despite specific directions from the High Court to stop the event if the music exceeds the levels.
The organisers had applied to organise the event before the Tourism Department on 28 April 2022 which was granted on 16 December 2022. GSPCB granted its consent on 28 December.
