lok Shakti Abhiyan (lSA) president Prafulla Samantara on Friday alleged that the high-level committee (HlC) set up to by the Union Ministry of Environment and Forests is against the Constitution and would bring disaster in the country. At a seminar organised by the lSA on the occasion of the World Environment Day, Samantara said the recommendation of the HlC is a deliberate attempt to dismantle the basic structure of India’s environmental law. “To give importance to the interest of business and industry, the committee overrode the right to clean air, water and balanced ecosystem,” he added.
Other activists like lingaraj, Prof Birendra Nayak, Sudhir Pattnaik, Rabi Das, Shankar Pani and Biswajit Mohanty said the report is totally blind to climate change concerns. There is no discussion or analysis on climate change in the report at all, they added. The activists said India’s 12th Five-Year Plan had specifically given importance to climate change as India would be severely affected if global warming proceeds. “Most disturbingly, the HlC aimed to defang the National Green Tribunal, a quasi-judicial body, that has emerged as the most effective grievance redressal mechanism on environmental issues,” they said, adding, “The HlC limits the role of the NGT to the narrow confines of ‘judicial review’ as opposed to a comprehensive ‘merit review’.” Samantara said the report is regressive and aims at dismantling the legal framework which exists for protection of environment. It has designed some tactics to silence people’s voice. Therefore, the report deserves to be rejected, he added.