All thirty-six States/UTs have constituted the Special Task Force under the chairpersonship of the Chief Secretary/Administrator/Additional Chief Secretary/Principal Secretary/Development Commissioner/Secretary, as deemed appropriate, for elimination of identified single use Plastic items and effective plastic waste management.

The Special Task Force has officers of concerned Government Departments/organizations and concerned State Pollution Control Board/Pollution Control Committee, as members. The meetings of Special Task Force have been convened by the States/UTs from time to time, as per requirement.

A National Level Taskforce has also been constituted by the Ministry for taking coordinated efforts to eliminate identified single use plastic items and effective implementation of Plastic Waste Management Rules, 2016. States and Union Territories have been asked to undertake regular enforcement drives to implement ban on identified single use plastic items and on plastic carry bags having thickness less than one hundred twenty microns.

Regular enforcement drives have been undertaken to enforce ban on identified single use plastic items by CPCB/SPCB/PCC along with local authorities across the country. Actions have been taken by concerned authorities on the deviations, which include seizure of banned single use plastic items and levy of penalty. As per details provided by SPCB/PCC and details available at SUP compliance monitoring portal, a total of 8,61,740 inspections have been conducted and 1985 tonnes of banned single use plastic items have been seized and a total of Rs. 19.82 crores of fine has been levied during the period July, 2022 to July, 2025.

This information was provided by UNION MINISTER OF STATE FOR ENVIRONMENT, FOREST AND CLIMATE CHANGE, SHRI KIRTI VARDHAN SINGH, in a written reply to a question in Rajya Sabha today.

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VM/SK

(Rajya Sabha US Q3259)

(Release ID: 2159298)