City police commissioner Vishwas Nangre Patil with DJ owners
Nagpur: City police commissioner Vishwas Nangre Patil on Friday directed around 300 DJ and music-system owners to strictly follow sound norms. At a meeting at Police Bhavan, he warned that violating Supreme Court and High Court guidelines could invite strict action under the Environment Protection Act, attracting imprisonment of up to five years and a fine of Rs 1 lakh.
Nangre Patil said the intent was not to hurt business but to ensure noise-pollution norms were strictly followed. “DJ operators must run their business within the legal framework,” he said, explaining that every police station had been given calibrated decibel meters, set as per Supreme Court limits for residential, commercial and silent zones, to measure noise levels. Nangre Patil said violations had been noticed across communities, not just during one community’s religious functions, and action had been taken uniformly. “The Supreme Court has been stringent, courts are watching, activists have filed several litigations, and contempt has been recorded against the department in the past,” he said.
When a DJ owner argued that low sound could not reach the end of a large gathering, the CP replied that the norms could not be diluted. He, however, assured the owners that he would not insist on registering offences if they cooperated with police and stayed within the prescribed decibel limits. Joint CP Navinchandra Reddy was also present.