Filmmaker Karan Johar’s film production company, Dharma Productions has come under fire from environmentalists for dumping waste in a Goan village during a film shoot. A unit of Deepika Padukone and Shakun Batra’s upcoming film has been shooting in Goa over the last month. It has been reported that the crew dumped waste such as plastic utensils and used PPE kits at the village.
Kangana Ranaut, too, jumped into the matter, tweeting about Karan and the film industry’s ‘appalling attitude’. She retweeted a video of the alleged waste dump created by the Dharma crew in the village. “Movie industry is not a virus just for the moral fibre n culture of this nation but it has become very destructive and harmful for the environment also, @PrakashJavdekarji @moefcc see this disgusting,filthy,irresponsible behaviour by so called big production houses, pls help,” she wrote.
“Their insensitive and inconsiderate attitude is absolutely appalling,film units need strict rules about women safety, modern ecological resolves, good medical facilities and food quality check for workers, we need government to assign a proper department to inspect these aspects,” she added.
Movie industry is not a virus just for the moral fibre n culture of this nation but it has become very destructive and harmful for the environment also, @PrakashJavdekar ji @moefcc see this disgusting,filthy,irresponsible behaviour by so called big production houses, pls help ? https://t.co/EZfzrIWz06
— Kangana Ranaut (@KanganaTeam) October 27, 2020
As per an IANS report, the waste was dumped at Nerul, a village 10km from Goan capital Panaji. Lokhancho Ekvott Goa, a group working for Goa’s environmental health has demanded an apology from Karan and threatened to ‘courier’ the dumped waste back to his office in Mumbai.
Health minister of Goa, Vishwajit Rane is quoted as saying in the report, “It is not right to dump waste in the open. When permission was given for the film shoot, conditions ought to have been added in guidelines that the entity will dispose of the waste,” Rane said.
Flynn Remedios of Lokhancho Ekvott said, “Would the firm dare dump piles of garbage at Juhu or Lokhandwala or Versova in Mumbai? There would have been a hue and cry immediately. Dumping of garbage by the roadside is a crime and is prohibited by local laws in Goa. Corporates and hotels as well as individual households are required to segregate wet and dry garbage and bio medical waste has to be packed in specially labelled bags.
However, Dharma Productions packed all the luggage together with scant respect for the environment and dumped it by the picturesque roadside, where animals vandalised it making the situation worse.”
Source: Hindustan Times
