The Supreme Court declared that the National Green Tribunal to take suo motu cognisance on its own in issues relating to the environment on the basis of letters, representations and media reports.
Judgement:
Not limited to Adjudicating Role: The role of the NGT is not simply adjudicatory in nature. The Tribunal has to perform equally vital roles that are preventative, ameliorative or remedial in nature.
The functional capacity of the NGT is intended to leverage wide powers to do full justice in its environmental mandate.
Article 21 rights cannot stand on a narrow compass of interpretation. Article 21 of the constitution protects the right to life and personal liberty.
Multidisciplinary Role: NGT, as a complimentary, competent, specialised forum, to deal with all environmental multidisciplinary issues both as original and also as an appellate authority.
International Commitment: The NGT embodied the international obligation India owed to the environment.
The NGT has been recognised as one of the most progressive Tribunals in the world.
This jurisprudential leap has allowed India to enter a rather exclusive group of nations which have set up such institutions with broad powers.
About National Green Tribunal:
It is a specialised body set up under the National Green Tribunal Act (2010) for effective and expeditious disposal of cases relating to environmental protection and conservation of forests and other natural resources.
With the establishment of the NGT, India became the third country in the world to set up a specialised environmental tribunal, only after Australia and New Zealand, and the first developing country to do so.
The NGT Act provided a specialized role to the tribunal to act on issues where a dispute arose under seven specified laws (mentioned in Schedule | of the Act): The Water Act, The Water Cess Act, The Forest Conservation Act, Air Act, Environment Protection Act, Public Liability Insurance Act and the Biological Diversity Act.
NGT is mandated to make disposal of applications or appeals finally within 6 months of filing the same.
The NGT has five places of sittings, New Delhi is the Principal place of sitting and Bhopal, Pune, Kolkata and Chennai are the other four.
The Tribunal is headed by the Chairperson who sits in the Principal Bench and has at least ten but not more than twenty judicial members and at least ten but not more than twenty expert members.
Decisions of the Tribunal are binding.
The Tribunal has powers to review its own decisions. If this fails, the decision can be challenged before the Supreme Court within ninety days.
