PANAJI
The Goa Chief Secretary has before the Bombay High Court at Goa 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 the rules.
In his affidavit, the Chief Secretary Puneet Kumar Goel has 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 28 December.
Similarly, application seeking NOC was applied before the Sub-Divisional Police Officer on 27 December and it was granted on 28 December.
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 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 Sa 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 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 for the event before the Tourism Department 28 April, 2022 which was granted on 16 December, 2022. GSPCB granted its consent on 28 December.
The Sunburn organisers are yet to file their affidavit.
