Team Herald

PANJIM: In a move that could deal a severe blow on the environmental movement in Goa, the Central Government issued a notification making the National Green Tribunal (NGT) Delhi Principal Bench as only place to file litigations related to Goa. 

Until now, Goa’s cases were heard before the West Zone Bench at Pune. There is, however, no clarity as to whether the cases currently pending before the Pune bench, which hears most of the cases related to environmental violations, will be referred to the Principal bench. 

Around 40 per cent of the cases in the Pune Bench are from Goa and activists feel this is a deliberate attempt to stem the efforts to keep Goa green. 

Reacting to the order, Rainbow Warriors activist Abhijit Prabhudesai, “Shifting of cases to Delhi, when Goa is in the West Zone, is to cause deliberate inconvenience to the petitioners. This is the special status the government promised.”

Another activist, Jose Maria Miranda, said, “It is a big blow to Goa’s environmentalists who have been selflessly fighting the government’s autocratic ways of going about things throwing environmental concerns to the winds.”

Environment activists had even suggested a bench in Goa due to the number of cases from the State. “This is contrary to what we expected,” Prabhudesai said. 

Crucial cases related to the Mandovi Bridge, Tiracol project, Investment Promotion Board (IPB) projects, coastal zone management violations, coastal regulation violations (CRZ), were filed before the Pune bench. 

Sources said that there is no clarity as to whether the existing cases would be referred to the Principal bench, as the notification has not thrown any light on this. “We will have to ask for a clarification in that matter,” sources said.

The notification issued by the Union Ministry for Environment, Forest and Climate Change (MoEF&CC), specifies the ordinary places of sitting and territorial jurisdiction of the NGT. 

Other states along with Goa that will have to file cases in Delhi include Uttar Pradesh, Uttarakhand, Punjab, Haryana, Himachal Pradesh, Jammu and Kashmir, Delhi, Daman and Diu and Dadra and Nagar Haveli. 

The Western Zone will now consist of the cases related to Gujarat and Maharashtra. The Southern bench at Chennai will take up cases of Kerala, Tamil Nadu, Andhra Pradesh, Telangana, Karnataka, Union Territories of Puducherry and Lakshadweep. 

The Eastern Zone at Kolkata bench will cover West Bengal, Odisha, Bihar, Jharkhand, Assam, Arunachal Pradesh, Manipur, Meghalaya, Mizoram, Nagaland, Tripura, Sikkim, and Andaman and Nicobar Islands.