The courts are upholding our right to a clean environment

Above: Sand artist Sudarsan Pattnaik has created a sand sculpture of a turtle and he used plastic bottles on it with message “Beat plastic pollution”. On the occasion of World Environment day he has created a 55 ft long 30ft wide sand sculpture of turtle at puri beach in Odisha/Photo: UNI

There have been a number of environmental issues that have been handled by the courts of this country in the past one year. Primary among these have been the MC Mehta judgment by the National Green Tribunal (NGT), headed by Justice Swatanter Kumar and even Supreme Court judgments that have hit status quo in a huge way. While there remains far more to do, on this World Environment Day, these judgments need a recount and recall.

The Ganga judgment on water pollution

This was hanging fire for decades. It all started from a writ filed in the Supreme Court by environmental activist and advocate M C Mehta in the Supreme Court (the NGT had not been formed yet) about the pollution of the Ganga through hazardous waste effluents, especially by industries located on its banks. The initial judgment was by Justice ES Venkataramiah who ordered shut many tanneries in Kanpur situated by the banks of the river. These tanneries sis not have any sewage treatment plant as prescribed. The order had said that quite like an industry which cannot afford minimum wages to its labourers, industries which do not care about the environment also cannot be allowed to operate.

That, unfortunately, did not have any effect as the tanneries continued to operate behind closed doors.

The case went over the NGT later and after many years of hearings at that level as well, before the court, extolling the ‘most celebrated river of all times’, laid out the ‘way ahead’ and shared ‘a new perspective’ for cleaning and rejuvenating the Ganga river in the next two years with a string of directions, including announcement of Rs 50,000 environmental compensation for every act of throwing any kind of waste in the river or its tributaries.

Justice Swatanter Kumar directed that “for each default, the defaulter would be liable to pay environmental compensation of Rs. 50,000 per default for such dumping and/or throwing the waste of any kind into the river”.

Remarking on how the “Ganga Jal, which had the capacity even to purify added water from other sources, has become water full of fecal material, metals and other pollutants”, Justice Kumar spelt out exhaustive measures to check all industrial and sewerage pollution in 2,525 km-long Ganga river which flows through five states in India.

The tribunal also prohibited dumping of waste within 500 metres of the river with directions that “there shall be no dumping or landfill sites for any kind of waste irrespective of any technology for waste processing, within 500 meters from the edge of the river Ganga and/or its tributaries”.

On air pollution (Taj trapezium)

The Taj Mahal was facing serious defacement due to the toxic emissions spewed by industries within the Taj trapezium, a hypothetical area. These included refineries, iron foundries, glass and other chemical industries. Acid rain had been detected that could completely erode the delicate marble surface of the mausoleum, one of India’s pride.

In this, too, it was M C Mehta vs Union of India (commonly known as the Taj trapezium case) of 1987 that came to the rescue. In a historic judgment the top court issued specific directions including banning the use of coal and cake, switching to natural gas.

Yamuna and Ganga are living entities

It was an order that sounded strange to some and also an order that was later set aside by the Supreme Court, but it was a novel attempt by the Uttarakhand High Court to try and save two rivers, the Ganga and Yamuna.

The court legally acknowledged that. The court declared the rivers as “living human entities”. While the judgement remained open to interpretations and debates, there was no doubt that it was a rather smart move. Lawyers could bring a case directly on behalf of the rivers in courts. As living entities, both rivers were allowed some legal rights.

The entire high court order came off a PIL filed by advocate Lalit Miglani in December. The court ordered shut 150 “defaulting” commercial establishments, imposed fines on anybody found defecating, littering or urinating within a distance of 500 m of the rivers.

The reverse allegations of suits could not be solved – who will sue who if a man drowns in the river, for example – and the top court set aside this order.

Sterlite Copper

This came to the light through a public outburst, with people of the Thoothukudi (Tuticorin) district of Tamil Nadu coming out in droves in public protest against the polluting copper smelters of the Vedanta Group.

In the police firing 13 people died and things could have gone out of hand had the Protesters in were met with brutal force by the state.

Protesters in Thoothukudi were met with brutal force by the state.

Kasauli clean-up

The NGT also pinpointed a special area, the Kasauli district of Himachal Pradesh and found that most of the hotels there had flouted environmental norms. The NGT has ordered demolition of all such hotels, an issue that came to a dangerous end with a government official being shot dead by a hotel owner. The court has not backed down in the face of any resistance whatsoever.

Ganga Rejuvenation

The tribunal passed a slew of directions to rejuvenate the Ganga in July 2017, declaring an area of 100 metres from the edge of the Haridwar-Unnao stretch as a ‘no-development zone’ and prohibiting waste from being dumped within 500 metres.

Diktat against Stubble Burning

In December 2015, the NGT prohibited agricultural residue burning in any part of Delhi, Rajasthan, Haryana, Punjab and Uttar Pradesh, and directed the states to provide the farmers with monetary and technical aid for extracting agricultural residue that can be used as industrial fuel. Justice Swatanter Kumar also rapped the Punjab government for failing to curb crop burning through the provision of incentives.

The Art of Living’s World Culture Festival verdict

The green tribunal, on December 7, held the Art of Living Foundation “responsible” for the damage caused by the World Culture Festival to the Yamuna floodplains in 2016. The order stated that the Rs 5-crore fine paid by the organization will be used for restoration work by the Delhi Development Authority.

—India Legal Bureau