Govt may clip green tribunal’s wings

The war of words between the judiciary and the government can turn murkier as the government is looking at clipping the wings of the National Green Tribunal (NGT) to check its environmental activism.

Updated on: Nov 5, 2013, 24:58:53 IST

Hindustan Times | By Chetan Chauhan, New Delhi

Prefer HTon Google

Share via

Copy link

The war of words between the judiciary and the government can turn murkier as the government is looking at clipping the wings of the National Green Tribunal (NGT) to check its environmental activism. The environment ministry had to hurriedly notify the recommendations of the Kasturirangan panel on the Western Ghats angering the state government, which claimed that they were not consulted before making 37% of the bio-diverse rich zone as an ecologically sensitive area.

Number of activities including mining and construction of new townships has been banned in the sensitive area.

The ministry came out with the new rule fearing that the tribunal may take an adverse view as it has sought ministry’s clarification on the two expert panel reports.

A senior ministry functionary felt that the NGT was giving them a policy direction on decide on the two reports. “It is over-stepping its jurisdiction,” the functionary said, adding that the NGT Act gives powers to the tribunal to adjudicate only under the seven environmental laws listed in schedule one.

The NGT had also questioned the ministry’s prerogative on two stage process for issuing statutory environment and forest approvals. The first stage is in principle approval for initial work including preparing environment impact assessment report and the second is final approval. The tribunal had said that the two stage approval process was not in conformity with law.

Both the Apex Court and the NGT had taken the government to task for trying to prevent enforcement of environmental laws, forcing the government to look at ways to tame the activism. “We are looking at revising the NGT rules to bring in more clarity on functioning of the tribunal,” a government functionary said. The rules were framed when Jairam Ramesh was the environment minister and provides a lot of flexibility to NGT chairperson to administer the tribunal. An issue of concern for the government is that in some benches, there are more judicial members than expert members. NGT is hearing applications for removal of debris and illegal construction from Yamuna floodplains.

Some of the other Delhi-specific cases being heard by the tribunal include: construction of elevated roads and waste disposal among others.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Chetan Chauhan
Chetan Chauhan is the National Affairs Editor looking into all aspects of news and features from across India. A Chevening scholar with over three decades of experience in reporting and news management, Chetan has extensively covered all important aspects of the social sector, political economy, environment and climate change nationally and internationally. He did a journalism course at the Reuters Institute of Journalism in Oxford and Digital Media training at Nanyang Technological University in Singapore. He started as a reporter with The Statesman in 1996 and joined the Hindustan Times in 2000 in the metro bureau covering environment, crime and Delhi politics. He covered hot local news, from the Jessica Lal murder case to the rebellion of Delhi Congress MLAs against then Chief Minister Sheila Dikshit, to the replacement of toxic vehicle fuel with cleaner compressed natural gas (CNG) in the national capital. Some of his stories on air pollution became part of the Supreme Court’s landmark MC Mehta versus Government of India case in the National Capital Region (NCR), forcing the government to take corrective measures. As part of the national political bureau since 2004, he covered important central sectors such as environment, education, social justice, labour, rural development, water resources, renewable energy, agriculture, broadcasting and the Planning Commission for more than a decade producing several exclusive and investigative breaking stories. His specialisation is the environment, having covered at least a dozen United Nations global conferences on climate change, biodiversity and wildlife including climate summits in Paris, Copenhagen and Bali. He also covered India’s two five-year plans ---11th and 12th and reported on drafting and execution of right based laws such as Right to Education, Right to Information and rural job guarantee law, MG-NREGA, now being introduced in new format as VG-RAM-G Act. He has in-depth knowledge of social sector issues. He was one of the first to report on tigers vanishing from Sariska and Panna wildlife reserves in 2004 and 2008, respectively, leading to the setting up of the National Tiger Conservation Authority (NTCA) and the introduction of stringent penal provisions for poaching. He has written extensively on the rising human-animal conflict in India and the degradation of India’s biodiversity hotspots because of mining and other activities. Since 2004, Chetan has covered Parliament comprehensively and participated in training on the nuanced coverage of Parliament proceedings. He has travelled extensively across India to cover national and provincial elections since 1998, especially in the Hindi heartland states, considered India’s road to power. He writes a regular column for Hindustan Times, Ecostani, on important national politics, economy, Himalayan ecology and environmental issues. His other responsibilities include providing inputs for edits and edit page articles for the publication, apart from managing news flow from across India.Read More

Follow India news real-time updates and the latest news covered on Hindustan Times, featuring today's critical updates on Sonam Wangchuk LIVE and more across India.