Draft EIA: Delhi HC Issues Notice In Modification Plea Seeking Direction To Centre To Further Extend The Deadline For Public Comments

The Division Bench of Chief Justice DN Patel and Justice Prateek Jalan has issued notice to the Ministry of Environment, Forests and Climate Change, and will next take up the matter on September 23.

Filed in a disposed off writ petition titled Vikrant Tongad v. Union of India, the present modification plea states that if the direction to extend the deadline is not issued to the Central Government, the letter and spirit of this court's order dated 30/06/20 will be defeated.

By its order dated June 30, the present court had extended the deadline for submitting public comments on Draft EIA Policy by August 11.

The court had also directed the Environment Ministry to translate the draft policy in at least the languages mentioned in the VII Schedule of the Constitution, and make the same available on the website of the Ministry of Environment, Forests and Climate Change, as well as the respective Environment Ministries and State Pollution Control Boards of all respective states within a period of ten days.

The said order reads as:

'...we are of the view that it would be in aid of effective dissemination of the proposed notification if arrangements are made for its translation into other languages as well, at least those mentioned in the Eighth Schedule to the Constitution. Such translation may be undertaken by the Government of India itself, or with the assistance of the respective State Governments, where applicable.'

In order to argue that the directions of the court have not been efficiently complied with by the concerned Ministry, the Petitioner highlighted the following facts:

1. No translations were completed and uploaded within 10 days. This was a clear transgression of the Court's directive.
2. The MoEF in fact communicated to the State Governments to carry out the translations within 10 days, but not to take further steps (uploading) until specific directions were given by the MoEF
3. The draft EIA Notification 2020 was only made available on the homepage of the main website of the MoEF (http://moef.gov.in/) as recently as 24th August, 2020.
4. Further, the Respondent has even failed to upload the draft EIA Notification, 2020 in the English and Hindi language on the websites of the State Environment Departments and State Pollution Control Boards

It is further argued by the Petition that as per the RTI reply received from the concerned Ministry, the draft policy has only been translated in 3 languages as on 30th July 2020, namely Marathi, Oriya and Nepali. Moreover, the Petitioner got to know that it is only recently that the translations have been made in Bengali, Telugu and Konkani.

Therefore, it is the case of the Petitioner that the non-compliance of the court's June 30 order has further hampered the public consultation process.