Children prepare for Saraswati puja, to be celebrated on Monday. Picture by Pabitra Das

The state environment department is set to declare three more areas in the city silence zones.

The new zones are the Medical College Hospital-Presidency College belt, St Xavier’s College-La Martiniere schools and their surroundings and the roads adjacent to SSKM Hospital.

Using loudspeakers, lighting fireworks and blowing horns will be banned within 100 metres of these zones.

The decision on the new zones was taken at a meeting chaired by chief secretary Amit Kiran Deb in January. Among those present were the home secretary, environment secretary, police commissioner, director-general of police, municipal commissioner, member-secretary of the state pollution control board and the senior law officer in the state environment department.

“We have long been contemplating a declaration of the areas as silence zones in conformity with the Environment (Protection) Act, 1986. Now that the panel has approved the proposal, we will soon issue a notification,” said environment secretary M.L. Meena.

“The notification is likely to be issued by February,” said Biswajit Mukherjee, the senior law officer in the environment department.

The panel decided that the police and the state pollution control board will arrange for “proper publicity” of noise norms in the silence zones and also publish advertisements in newspapers. The police will start taking action against violators a fortnight after the publication of the advertisements.

“It is easy to issue a notification but difficult to enforce it. Noise norms are often violated in areas that have already been designated as silence zones,” said an environmentalist. An earlier notification had declared all major state-run hospitals, the high court, district courts and Raj Bhavan as silence zones.

Noise alert: The state noise monitoring committee has written to the police commissioner and the director-general of police, reminding them of the high court ban on the use of microphones in open-air functions from three days before a major board exam till its completion. Since, Madhyamik starts from February 15, the ban comes into effect from Tuesday. The panel’s letters assume significance as Saraswati puja immersions are scheduled for Tuesday.