- The Supreme Court said that it cannot ban firecrackers as it would deprive the livelihood of lakhs of families dependent on manufacturing firecrackers by creating unemployment.
- The court asked the authorities to conduct a comparative study to identify the proportionate levels of pollution caused by vehicles and firecrackers before any decision is taken.
- The court had last year banned the use of firecrackers to curb rising environment pollution.While forbidding the use of conventional firecrackers,the court had permitted the use of green crackers,which cause less emissions and are not as noisy.
- Following the ban,the cracker industry had moved the Supreme court pleading that the order had deprived five lakh families of their livelihood in Tamil Nadu’s Sivakasi district,a cracker hub.
- Green crackers are so named because they do not contain harmful chemicals that would cause air pollution.In green crackers the commonly used polluting chemicals like aluminium, barium,potassium nitrate and carbon have either been removed or sharply reduced to slow down the emissions by 15 to 30%.
