Panel just for ‘green’ affairs

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GREEN BILL FOR BREATHING SPACE
Panel just for ‘green’ affairs?
Environment Ministry Moves Cabinet For Setting Up Tribunal
Mahendra Kumar Singh & Nitin Sethi | TNN

New Delhi: In a move to reduce the burden on judiciary as well as address the increasing number of environment-related litigation, the government has proposed to set up a National Green Tribunal along with benches in different regions.
The environment and forests ministry has moved a Cabinet note for inter-ministerial discussions for setting up the green tribunal.
If established, the tribunals will become the only forums where civil cases pertaining to the entire set of central environment related laws, including public interest litigation, would be entertained. Besides this, the tribunal will also address all substantial questions relating to environment. Appeals against the environment courts would go to the Supreme Court.
The move is the second time the govt has attempted to set up such benches after the Law Commission in its 186th report in 2003 recommended the setting up of green benches.Keeping in mind that environment is an evolving subject in jurisprudence, the tribunal shall not be bound to follow the procedure laid down in the Code of Civil Procedure, 1908 but would be guided by the principles of natural justice. However, it will have the regular powers that other judicial institutions wield. The special court shall also not be bound by the rules of evidence contained in the Indian Evidence Act, 1872. The move comes with the Supreme Court and high courts having set up several expert committees to help it with technical and policy issues on thousands of environment related issues that have come up before it. Some of these committees were created more than two decades ago.
The SC environmental committees have often courted controversy while increasingly laying down the rules for the executive on an array of issues impacting urban areas as well as tribal rights.
The tribunal shall have a full-time judicial member as its chairperson along with three full-time technical members, including an expert in physical, life sciences or engineering, a law expert, and another with administrative experience in environmental policy. All members will have a fixed fiveyear tenure. If the tribunal is set up, the National Environment Tribunal Act of 1995 and the National Environmental Appellate Authority Act of 1997 would also be repealed, the govt said. Failure to comply with the orders of the green tribunal, the draft bill said, would lead to fine of Rs 10 crore and three years imprisonment.