Petition held not maintainable.

(K. Chandru, J.)

The petitioners in these writ petitions were admittedly party to the judgment of the Division Bench of this Court made in W.P.Nos.29791 of 2003 and 39368 of 2003, which were disposed on 212. 2006 in Noyyal River Ayacutdars Protection Association vs. The Government of Tamil Nadu, Represented by its Secretary and others. In those writ petitions, apart from several other directions, this Court imposed fine on the Common Effluent Treatment Plants [for short, CETPs] on the basis of polluter pays principle. Paragraph 30(a)(i) of our judgment dated 212. 2006 reads as follows:

Para 30: "(a) The CETPs are given time up to the 31st of July, 2007 to achieve the Zero Liquid Discharge (ZLD) of trade effluents subject to the following conditions-

(i) The concerned CETPs are directed to pay a fine on pro rata basis at the rate of six paise per litre from 1st January, 2007 to 31st March, 2007; at the rate of eight paise per litre from 1st April, 2007 to 31st May 2007; and at the rate of ten paise per litre from 1st June, 2007 to 31st July, 2007. The fine amount payable by the respective CETPs shall be arrived at by multiplying the fine amount i.e., six, eight, or ten paise, as the case may be, by the total quantity of discharge of each Member Units of CETP as per the consent certificate or as the quantity found in the application for consent and also by the total number of working days in a month. The fine amount thus calculated shall be paid by the respective CETPs on the last date of every month. In case the CETPs or any of them commit any default in payment of fine, the Pollution Control Board shall direct closure of such defaulting CETP and the Member Units and also disconnect the power supply to such defaulting CETP and the Member Units."

[Emphasis added]

2. According to the petitioners, while they have no quarrel with reference to the payment of fine, their only concern is about making payments of fine amount even on days when the units were not in operation. Therefore, each of the writ petitioner has stated that during the month of January, the units were closed on many days and they had only worked for 12 days during January, 2007 and in Februrary, 2007, only for 19 days and therefore, when they were asked to pay fine based upon the total number of working days, they had calculated the fine amounts on the basis of the days they had actually operated the units and not on the basis of the number of available working days for the months of January and February, 2007.

3. Therefore the present batch of writ petitions were filed several CETPs with a prayer for the issuance of writ of mandamus forbearing the Tamil Nadu Pollution Control Board [for short, TNPCB] from calculating and collecting fine from the member units of the petitioner/CETPs in excess of the actual days operated by them for the months of January and February, 2007.

4. It is seen that in some petitions, interim orders dated 13. 2007 were passed by a Division Bench of this Court allowing them to deposit certain amounts and the Board was restrained from taking any coercive steps. The writ petitions were not admitted and all the writ petitions in which interim orders were given as well as other writ petitions were came to be posted before us.

5. We have heard Mr. N.R. Chandran, learned senior counsel appearing for some of the petitioners and the other respective counsels for the petitioners in other writ petitions and Mr. R. Viduthalai, learned Advocate General appearing for Mr. Ramanlal, learned counsel for the T.N. Pollution Control Board, and have perused the records.

6. Learned Advocate General raised a preliminary objection as to the maintainability of the writ petitions. According to him, though the writ petitioners were all parties to the earlier proceedings which culminated in the final judgment dated 212. 2006 and the petitioners, being party to those writ proceedings, cannot file another set of writ petitions questioning the very basi