HC notice to Centre on plea challenging memorandum regarding environmental clearance for ongoing projects

  

On Tuesday, the High Court of Delhi issued notice to the Centre on a plea challenging office memorandum issued on July 7, 2021, by the Ministry of Environment, Forest & Climate Change (MoEFCC) providing another opportunity to get Environmental Clearance (EC) for the projects that have initiated operations without procuring prior environmental clearance.

On Tuesday, the Bench of Justice DN Patel & Justice Jyoti Singh issued notice to the Union of India through the MoEFCC and slated the matter for March 29, 2022, for further hearing. However, Court refused to grant any interim stay on the operation of the said memorandum.

The petitioner Nishtha Shukla through Lawyers Chirag Jain & Shobhit Shukla said that the impugned office memorandum provided another opportunity to the violators to procure an ex post facto clearance against the provisions of Environment Impact Assessment Notifications 1994 & 2006, also violating the express bar to do so by the Supreme Court.

The petitioner further said that the said memorandum shall result in serious degradation of the environment & the violators getting an opportunity to regularize their operations.

The petition also said that the memorandum is in gross violation of the law as set out in the EIA notification 1994, wherein a prior environmental clearance was made mandatory before initiation of any new project or modernization of an existing project or expansion of an already existing project.

The Environment Impact Assessment Notification, 1994 & The Environment Impact Assessment Notification 2006 provide for a mandatory environmental clearance to be taken prior to the initiation of any work on a project. These restrictions & prohibitions on new projects or activities, or on the expansion or modernization of existing projects or activities based on their potential environmental impacts form the basis of the environmental jurisprudence of the country. There is no provision in the law that allows violators to obtain an ex post facto clearance i.e., the opportunity to obtain environmental clearance for the projects which have already begun does not exist in the law. This understanding is for a good reason. It is this deterrence of closing down of operations & heavy cost to be paid for the destruction caused to the environment of a particular site, that is very crucial for the protection of the environment from violators, the petition said.

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