NEW DELHI: The National Green Tribunal has shelved Delhi Development Authority‘s new building bylaws which exempt realty projects from undergoing Environment impact assessment (EIA).
In a detailed judgment dated December 8, published on Wednesday, NGT also stayed the Union environment ministry’s notification of December 9 which exempted real-estate projects (up to 1,50,000 sq m built-up area) in the country from undergoing EIA and obtaining environmental clearance (EC).

Aimed at ease of doing business, the ministry’s notification had entrusted the monitoring of environment parameters of realty projects to urban local bodies which also sanction these projects.

DDA was the first agency in the country to incorporate the new guidelines in the environment ministry’s December 9 notification, even before the final notification was issued.

The environment ministry in its notification had also said that “consent to establish” and “consent to operate” under the provisions of the Air Act 1981 and the Water Act 1974 will not be required anymore from the state pollution control boards for large building projects.

The notification was challenged by a group of petitioners in NGT on various grounds, including the reason for exemption being “ease of doing responsible business”.

They said ease of doing business cannot be a ground for exempting the application of environmental law. RTI responses had earlier cited a letter from then urban development minister M Venkaiah Naidu to former environment minister Prakash Javadekar in which Naidu wrote that integrating environmental clearances with the permission to construct buildings was a “landmark step in ease of doing business.”

The environment ministry had justified the notification in the light of the government’s objective of “providing houses for all by 2022 with an objective of making available affordable housing to weaker sections in urban areas”.

In a strongly worded judgment – one of the last passed by former NGT chairperson Swatanter Kumar before he retired on Wednesday – the bench said: “‘Ease of doing responsible business’ cannot be in fact and in law the ground for making amendment to the environmental laws, as it primarily falls beyond the scope of the object and purposes of the environmental laws in force. It is only a ploy to circumvent the provisions of the environmental assessment.”
It noted that the environment ministry’s notification ignores the evaluation, assessment or monitoring of the environment impact of the building and construction activity. “The construction industry consumes enormous resources and has a significant energy footprint; the sector emits 22% of India’s total annual carbon dioxide emissions,” it stated.
Invoking the Paris agreement on climate change, the bench also referred to international law principle of non-regression and said environmental laws cannot be modified to weaken them. “Under international law, the doctrine of non-regression is an accepted norm. It is founded on the idea that environmental law should not be modified to the detriment of environmental protection. This principle needs to be brought into play because today environmental law is facing a number of threats such as deregulation, a movement to simplify…”
NGT also pointed to the conflict of interest in entrusting the job of monitoring environmental parameters to local bodies. “The local authorities which are the sanctioning authorities would also become adjudicatory authorities under the impugned notification. This dual functioning by the same authority make them judge in their own cause, in contravention of the principle of natural justice…” Source : timesofindia