Hyderabad: The Supreme Court on Friday dismissed an appeal against the order of the National Green Tribunal (NGT) in Delhi with regard to environmental clearances for the construction of the new capital of Andhra Pradesh in Amaravati. This naturally comes as a huge relief to the Andhra Pradesh government.
A two-member bench comprising Justice A.K. Sikri and Justice Abdul Nazeer heard an appeal by retired IAS officer E.A.S. Sharma against challenging an order of the NGT which paves the way for the construction of the new AP capital in Amaravati. The bench expressed disinclination to interfere in the order of the National Green Tribunal.
The bench felt that entertaining this kind of petition would not be proper and remarked that these kinds of cases only come up in India. On November 17, 2017, the NGT in Delhi constituted a supervisory committee and an implementation committee to ensure proper compliance of the directions given by it in the construction of the new AP capital in Amaravati.
While disposing off the applications for environmental clearances by Mr Sharma and others, a three-member bench of the NGT, headed by its chairperson Justice Swatanter Kumar, had said, “We constituted the two committees to have requisite regulatory and supervisory control over the performance of the project proponent in the interest of environment and ecology.”
The supervisory committee constituted by the NGT was headed by additional secretary of the ministry of environment, forest and climate change. The members were additional chief secretary for the forest and environment of AP, senior scientists from the National Institute of Hydrology at Roorkee in Uttarakhand and Indian Institute of Science, Bengaluru, member-secretary of the AP Pollution Control Board, and Professor N.J. Pawar of the Department of Geology, Savitribai Phule University, Pune.
The NGT also dismissed a review petition filed by the applicants. Aggrieved by the order of the NGT, Mr Sharma moved the appeal before the Supreme Court contending that the Tribunal has not dealt with the issue of environmental clearances while granting the orders for the construction of the capital city, and the common judgment of the NGT on the appeals and original applications moved against the construction of the capital are not legally correct.
The Supreme Court bench pointed out that the state government had all required clearances for the construction of the capital.
