Soon a body for execution of environmental laws

Those aggrieved by execution of environment laws would soon have a body to seek 'fast redressal' before filing a petition before the Supreme Court, reports Chetan Chauhan.

Published on: Dec 23, 2006, 19:42:00 IST

None | By Chetan Chauhan, New Delhi

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Those aggrieved by execution of environment laws would soon have a body to seek 'fast redressal' before filing a petition before the Supreme Court. A draft bill finalised by the Law Ministry on the new format of tribunals is likely to be discussed by the Union Cabinet next month.

Ending multiple tribunals, a proposal to have National and Regional Environment Tribunals seeks to have a single body to look into all the cases related to environment laws. The move is aimed at having a regulator for environmental laws to provide fairness to the entire process, a senior Environment and Forest Ministry official said.

According to officials, all environmental laws — Water Act, 1974, Environment Protection Act, Wildlife Conservation Act, Forest Conservation Act and Hazardous Substances Management Act — would come under the purview of the tribunals. No other court would have power to enter into jurisdiction of these tribunals. The appeal against the tribunal's order would be allowed only in the Supreme Court as the tribunals will have status of a High Court.

"While maintaining the process of speedy redressal the government wants the process of natural justice to be followed," a senior ministry official said. The Law ministry, which recently vetted the proposal, had also talked about time-bound disposal of cases to prevent delay in execution of important development projects.

Being constituted on the basis of the Law Commission's recommendations, the tribunals would be two-tier system — one in a region and other at the national level. While some matter, like the ones directly related to the Ministry of Environment and Forests, would come directly under the purview of the National tribunals, others will have to be lodged with state tribunals.

The tribunal will have a chairperson and a member from judicial background and the remaining eight members would be experts from different fields like —Physics, Chemistry, Botany, Zoology, Engineering, Environmental Economics and Social Sciences and Forestry. Appeal against the tribunal's order can be made in the Supreme Court within 30 days, which can be extended by another 30 days.

With implementation of the new legislation, the National Environment Tribunal Act, 1995 and National Environment Appellate Authority, Act, 1977 would be repealed. The forward-looking legislation intends better public participation and scrutiny of implementation of environment laws without causing a delay in execution of projects, an official said.

Email Chetan Chauhan: chetan @hindustantimes.com

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

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