India, Oct. 16 -- Three days before the Supreme Court's sanctioned three-day sale window for "green firecrackers" was set to begin, the National Capital Region was already alight with illicit sales. From the historic lanes of Old Delhi to the bustling markets of Noida and Ghaziabad, traders and street vendors were openly selling a wide array of firecrackers, flouting the apex court's directives with a brazenness that highlighted a massive enforcement failure and administrative chaos.

An HT spot check across key markets in Delhi-NCR - including Sadar Bazar, Jama Masjid, Lajpat Nagar, and the satellite towns of Gurugram, Noida, and Ghaziabad -- revealed a uniform scene: a thriving, unchecked trade in pyrotechnics, where the label "green" w...