Plea dismissed: The court refused a suggestion by traders to allow them to sell their existing stock outside Delhi-NCR. File photo: Sushil Kumar Verma | Photo Credit: Sushil Kumar Verma more-in : The Supreme Court on Friday extended its November 2016 ban on the sale and stockpiling of firecrackers in Delhi-NCR despite pleas made by traders to modify the order. A Bench of Justices Madan B. Lokur and P.C. Pant further directed the Central Pollution Control Board (CPCB) to prepare an inventory of existing firecrackers with traders and suggest measures for their disposal. The Bench refused a suggestion by traders to allow them to sell their existing stock outside Delhi-NCR. “You cannot be allowed to sell or dispose of the stock in Bombay or elsewhere and create pollution,” the Bench said. ‘Right to clean air’ In November last year, the court had sent a clear message that religious and wedding celebrations took second place to the basic fundamental right to breathe clean air. Moved by the everyday despair of children, women and the elderly in a city choked by smog, the Supreme Court said the situation was indeed “grave” for drastic action to check the rising pollution graph. Having once compared bursting of firecrackers as the “burning of money”, the Supreme Court had held upheld the government’s authority to intervene in people’s right to celebrate weddings and festivals if the cause was urgent and entailed the larger public good. The ban was imposed on the basis of a petition filed last year by three Delhi children immediately after Diwali. ‘Children suffering’ Arjun Gopal, Aarav Bhandari and Zoya Rao Bhasin, represented by senior advocate K.K. Venugopal and advocate Gopal Sankaranarayanan, had told the Supreme Court how 40% children in Delhi suffered from respiratory diseases. They said children suffer the most and their battle to breathe gets tougher with the poisonous tang of Diwali firecrackers remaining in the air even days after the festivities are over.

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