NGT Orders Closure of Over 300 Units Violating Environmental Laws
BANGALORE: Environment watchdog National Green Tribunal directed the closure of 313 industrial units across India, including 23 in Gujarat, for violating key environment laws for over two decades.
The NGT verdict follows a 13-year-old pitched battle by leading Gujarat-based environmentalist Rohit Prajapati of the Paryavaran Suraksha Samiti and Ziya Pathan of the People's Union Civil Liberties in the Gujarat High Court which transferred the case to the NGT that took it on a national compass. IANS has all the copies of the relevant orders.
The NGT struck down the environment clearance (EC) procedure adopted during 1998 to 2002 by the union ministry of environment and forests (MoEF) for granting what was called "ex-post-facto environmental clearance" to over 300 defaulting chemical units, many of operated out of Gujarat.
Ex-post-facto environmental clearances means ECs to industries that had started after production in these units. The NGT called such clearances "illegal".
The tribunal asserted that "ex-post-facto" was "void ab-initio and ought to be struck down", and added: "We have no hesitation in holding that 'ex-post facto' process of obtaining ECs was just a farce, stage managed, wrong and impermissible under the law and suffered from illegality, which is incurable in any manner."
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