The National Green Tribunal Is Ineffective In Everything Except Bullying The Middle Class In The NCR Over Their Cars

A 2010 UPA era law put the latest cat amongst the pigeons. Was it influenced by the infamous National Advisory Council (NAC), Congress Chairperson Sonia Gandhi’s arch-leftist creation? But laws in India are a dime a dozen. After they are made however, everyone seems to take a very long rest.

Environmental issues have been concerning the powers-that-be from years before, illustrated by the enactment of The Environment (Protection) Act 1986.

This one enabled the central government to protect and improve the environment, control and reduce pollution and prohibit or restrict the setting up or operation of an industrial facility on environmental grounds.

 It was widely perceived to have been enacted in response to the Bhopal Gas Leak. The government of Rajiv Gandhi sought meagre compensation from  Union Carbide for the killed and maimed, but did frame this law.

There were five more legislations before 2010. The Public Liability Insurance Act and Rules 1991, amended 1992. The National Environmental Tribunal Act, 1995, amended in 2010. The National Environment Appellate Authority Act 1997. The Biomedical Waste (Management and Handling) Rules 1998.

The National Green Tribunal (NGT) was set up with the lofty objectives of conserving forests, protecting the environment, the nation’s natural resources, animal life, reducing pollution on land, water, and  to promote clean air.

 It has since failed in all these objectives. This was mainly because its orders were not obeyed. Most of them are either appealed in the Supreme Court, which effectively freezes action till the court decides, or stayed by one or the other of the high courts in the affected state.

The NGT has gradually learned it does better with individuals and corporate targets in the private sector. It was intended to take some of the load off the Supreme Court (SC), but has instead become just another layer in the legal system.

The forest timber mafias still operate with impunity, as do the poachers. The rivers continue to be polluted. Forest cover keeps on being reduced by encroachment. Mountain areas suffer more landslides due to felling of trees, rampant construction, and road widening. Clean air is a relative matter.

The NGT order to completely ban open burning of waste on land has failed utterly, with miles of paddy stubble burning every winter in three states, let alone at rubbish dumps the size of mountains in the Delhi area.

In the campaign of 2013 -14, prime ministerial candidate Narendra Modi often spoke of the ‘Jayanthi Tax’, in reference to UPA Environment Minister Jayanti Natarajan’s action of blocking several projects in Gujarat and all the mining in Goa. The NGT nurtured quite a tribe of activists in Goa that put a lot of miners out of work for years and caused loss of revenue to the Government of Goa.. The NGT provided the objections.

Certainly, her predecessor in the job, Jayaram Ramesh, was equally obstructionist. You couldn’t build a highway near a forest in his time.  

But was there really the hefty alleged payoffs before things would be cleared? The CBI found large amounts of unaccounted cash, as much as Rs. 25 crores of it. There are some ‘Birla Diaries’ with the Income Tax authorities with entries that suggest payola. However, Natarajan stoutly denied any wrongdoing. She was removed from her ministerial job nevertheless, and mounted a scathing attack against Rahul Gandhi thereafter.

The negative/positive effect of the NGT can be assessed from its so-called successes. It joined the queue to stop the establishment of the 12MTPA capacity steel plant valued at an investment of $12 billion, as estimated in 2005 by South Korean giant POSCO.

POSCO had the audacity to sign an MoU with the Government of Odisha. It is a wonder foreign investment still comes to India, given our fondness for bureaucratic and legal red tape, and some would say, hatred of commercial progress.

There were initial objections raised after a law, The Scheduled Tribes and other Traditional Forest Dwellers (Recognition of Forest Rights) Act, 2006, came into being that did not exempt the POSCO steel mine endeavour.

There were 8 tribal villages affected, of which seven gradually saw the merits in allowing the plant to come up.  One held out against the project. The Communists got involved to prevent the project as well. Various committees were set up and submitted lengthy reports. The Supreme Court was in favour of letting the project come up.

In 2011, the MoU expired, and was in the process of being renewed with additional conditions in favour of the tribals, in 2012. This never happened, as POSCO’s interest waned. It tried to launch another steel factory, almost half the size, in Karnataka instead, but this too floundered at the land acquisition stage. The original effort was a project badly needed by the Odisha economy, but Chief Minister Naveen Patnaik though better than using his political capital to see it through.

The NGT, recently come on the scene, put a stop to it as well. It was in order to protect the local tribals and forest dwellers who lived at the project site area from being relocated. The matter was also politicised by Congress leader Rahul Gandhi going to the POSCO site to make common cause. The UPA was in power at the centre.

In Tamil Nadu’s Tuticorin, the UK based Vedanta Group was running Sterlite Industries, a copper smelter plant working since 1995-96 producing about 4 tonnes of copper per annum. In March 2013, after a gas leak from the plant, and allegations of pollution, the Tamil Nadu Pollution Control Board in concert with the NGT, shut down the plant, even though nobody was killed.

Tamil Nadu, known for its excellent industrial relations, made a political exception this time, with the newly elected Stalin after the death of his father, and the DMK cadres, demonstrating to shut down the Sterlite Plant. This occasioned the complete import of India’s copper needs, ever since, from China instead.

More recently in 2023, the NGT has slapped a penalty of Rs. 10 crores on the Kerala government for its failure to check pollution of the Vembanad and Ashtamudi lakes listed as ecologically sensitive wetlands. It asked the Government of Rajasthan to close down the salt pans in the Sambhar Salt Lake that are near the wetlands in 2016. This battle over the wetlands carries on to this day in other parts as well.

 The NGT has been asking various states such as Bihar (deposit Rs. 4,000 crores in a ring-fenced account for the purpose), Uttarakhand, and Maharashtra ( deposit Rs. 12,000 crores in an escrow account), to adopt better waste management practices.  In 2022 it has fined West Bengal Rs. 3,500 crores for failing to effectively manage its solid and liquid waste.

The NGT has not even been able to completely stop single use plastics under 50 microns per its order, let alone the sand mafia, or illegal stone quarrying by blowing up mountain rocks with dynamite generating clouds of dust.

There is no clean Ganga yet after 12 plus years of its existence. There is an effort to clean up the Ulhas River in Maharashtra, again with little result via sewage treatment plants. And the Yamuna in Delhi, continues to be a malodorous drain. The NGT has issued stern notices to the Delhi Jal Board but the requisite sewage treatment plants have not come up. States upstream have also been given NGT notices but to little actual avail.

The NGT is headquartered in New Delhi, and headed by a retired Supreme Court judge. It also sits in Bhopal, Pune, Kolkata and Chennai. The NDA has resisted its encyclicals throughout its tenure, and now controls it somewhat, by wresting the appointment of its members from the control of the Supreme Court.

The NGT has suo moto powers as per the Supreme Court in 2021. This means, the NGT can take up issues on its own, even if no one comes knocking on its doors. One can protest an NGT order by taking the matter to the Supreme Court, but only during a narrow window of opportunity of some 60 days.

The  NGT’s claim to fame is in the banning of 10 year-old diesel cars in the NCR, with no reference to their mileage, maintenance or ownership. Even cars registered in other states outside the NCR, cannot ply within its limits without risking being confiscated, fined, or both.

The governments in the NCR don’t have any problem with complying with the 2015 order. They don’t pay for their vehicles, the taxpayer does. Still, they drag their feet till replacements are furnished.

And it is likewise for 15 year-old petrol cars. And the same black law was imposed on all 10 year-old diesel cars in six cities in Kerala. However, in Kerala, its high court promptly stayed the NGT order. The NCR has not been so lucky.

The 2015 order in the NCR was indeed challenged, but the SC upheld it without qualification. The order is a source of great muscularity on the NGT’s part. But it is a source of general discontent from middle-class owners of private vehicles.

Recently the TV News Channel Mirror Now took on a campaign to ask the Delhi Police not to seize and remove the old cars, without notice to their owners. The car registrations, even if they have further years to run, are cancelled. An arbitrary scrap value is allegedly paid in due course.

The slogan used by the TV channel is My Old Car Is Not Bekaar. They are picked up forcibly by privately contracted cranes, and sent forthwith to the scrapyard. And there, such cars are piled high, the visuals show, as capacity to turn them into scrap is highly limited, primitive, and yes, severely polluting.

The demand from car owners is for a review of the NGT order. One suggestion is based on the fact that many private cars are lightly used. Private car users are saying many of their cars have barely 50,000 Km on the odometer after 10/15 years of use. They are well-maintained and can pass any fitness test. It is inter-state/city taxis, lorries, buses, three-wheeler cargo carriers and the like, with perhaps 200,000 km done in the same period that should be looked at for their pollution potential.

Cars can indeed be sold outside of the NCR before the 10/15 year deadline. But to force this, means private owners are not only deprived of perfectly good vehicles, but receive meagre sale prices.

This high-handed ruling without any nuance also causes hardship to many, including elderly and retired owners who are hard-pressed or unable to buy new cars at ever rising prices. To point them towards public transport is both insensitive and impractical.

Both the NGT and the SC have, till now, refused to react to this public demand, even after more than seven years of public hardship. But neither have the politicians from the Delhi government or the Centre got involved to provide some relief.

It is as if they are promoting new car sales, including those of the electric cars with their Chinese lithium batteries, in concert with the automobile dealers.

The odd thing is, only three countries have such a tribunal- Australia, New Zealand and India.

 

(1,865 words)

For week starting 3^rd July, 2023

For: Firstpost/News18.com

Gautam Mukherjee