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Judgment
Plea of non-maintainability of the present petition is made by Respondent No.1 in M.A.No.322/2016. Broadly, plea is made on three grounds; (1) Limitation as prescribed under National Green Tribunal Act, 2010, (2) Locus-standie and (3) Issue raised falling beyond jurisdiction of the Tribunal as conferred upon it by virtue of the provisions of National Green Tribunal Act, 2010.
At the outset, we may clarify that we are examining the present Application from the environmental point of view and the considerations under Town Planning Act have little role to play unless such considerations resonate the environmental aspects.
Applicant No.1 Jai Jawan Jai Kisan claims to be an organization which works for the association of cricket players. Other two Applicants, residents of Nagpur, claim themselves to be RTI and social activists working on various issues, being especially engaged in battle against corruption and doing positive socio-agricultural work.
The Applicants are seeking the following reliefs :
A. The Respondent No.1 VCA may kindly be hold responsible for violation of provision in EIA Notification 2006 as they have not taken EC and consent to operate from the MPCB and using the stadium for commercial gain. Other Respondents neglected the environment violation being committed by the Respondent No.1 hence Respondents No.2 to 11 may be hold responsible for contravening their legal obligations and exemplary fine may be imposed on them. For not following 'Precautionary Principal', 'Polluters Pay Principal' may kindly be used against the Respondent No.1 VCA and others by imposing heavy fine.
B. All Matches from the filing of this Petition should be stalled. Use of the VCA stadium, Jamtha, Nagpur should be stopped immediately by issuing closure orders.
C. Environmental damages and revenue losses as deemed fit may kindly be imposed on the Respondent No.1 VCA and other Respondents.
D. The concerned authorities be directed to demolish the VCA's illegal cricket stadium and be prosecuted.
G. Considering the socio-environment purpose of filing the present Environment Interest Litigation (EIL) all the Respondents may kindly be directed to pay cost of Rs.1 lakhs as litigation expenses to the Applicant.
Grievance in the present Application, according to the applicants, arises upon construction of Vidarbha Cricket Association's (VCA) Cricket stadium having total built up area 16,951.576 sq. mtr., at Jamtha, Nagpur, without obtaining Environmental Clearance (EC) or consent to operate and thereby injuring the environment. Perusal of the Application reveals that the injury to the environment is perceived from the facts : that there is insufficient effluent treatment plant, parking spaces, plantation of trees and failure to hand over open spaces and public utility lands to the concerned authority. In substance the Applicant are seeking demolition of VCA stadium raised without obtaining EC or consent to operate, which they believe to be the root cause of environmental ills and demolition of which would restore the environment. It is, therefore, an Application for restoration of environment under Section 15 of the National Green Tribunal Act, 2010.
Section 18(2) of the National Green Tribunal Act, 2010 gives the categories of persons who can initiate action for grant of relief or compensation or settlement of dispute in following terms :
Section 18(2) : Application or appeal to Tribunal :
(1) - - - - - -
(2) Without prejudice to the provisions contained in section 16, an application for grant of relief or compensation or settlement of dispute may be made to the Tribunal by -
(a) the person, who has sustained the injury, or
(b) the owner of the property to which the damage has been caused; or
(c) where death has resulted from the environmental damage, by all or any of the legal representatives of the deceased or
(d) any agent duly authorized by such person or owner of such property or all or any of the legal representatives of the deceased, as the case may be; or
(e) any person aggrieved, including any representative body or organization, or
(f) the Central Government or a State Government or a Union territory Administration or the Central Pollution Board or a Pollution Control Committee or a local authority, or any environmental authority constituted or established under the Environment (Protection) Act, 1986 (29) of 1986) or any other law for the time being in force.
(3) - - - - - -
Pertinently, any person aggrieved including any Representative-body or organizations can initiate Application under Section 14 and 15 of National Green Tribunal Act, 2010. Being residents of Nagpur and social activists working for society in general, the Applicants could be said to have been aggrieved by the injury to the environment caused due to raising of the said stadium. As individuals, they have every right to enjoy clean environment. Any infraction of such right entitles them to initiate proceedings under provisions of National Green Tribunal Act, 2010. Objection raised to maintainability of the present Application on the ground of locus, therefore, do not appeal to us much.
The Applicants have narrated the facts leading to the institution of the present Application. All these facts provide a view of what cause of action in the present case is. The Applicants plead that illegalities pertaining V.C.A. stadium at Jamtha commenced since the year 2004 and the stadium started functioning and organizing various big cricket tournaments from the year 2008. Thus, the material existence which possibly could have injured the environment was since the year 2008. Para 13 and 24 quoted herein below reveal what the Applicants have to state about the dimensions of the said stadium.:
The VCA in its letter Application for consent dated 23/10/2008 to the Regional Officer, MPCB have mentioned in their first para that they are operating the stadium from May 2008. In their third para they have mentioned that "We have constructed the state of art modern stadium with stadium built up area 11,552 sq. mtrs. and activity area of 19,400 sq. mt. we have also constructed club having built up area of 2773 sq.mtr.". According to this letter the total built up area is 33,725 sq.mt. The said letter dated 23/10/2008 written by CA to Regional Officer, MPCB, Nagpur is annexed as Annexure C.
The VCA's total area is 1 lakh 28 thousand, 2 hundred sq.mt. of which stadium structure measures at 51,854 sq.mts and club house at 5057.34 sq.mt. According to EIA Notification, 2006 EC is mandatory for such huge constructions. The Competent authorities are also supposed to take over 15 % of total area of 1,28,200 as open space and public utility land from VCA and keep in its possession for facilitating services to public. VCA is supposed to pay charges for layout and building plan sanction. NIT can earn revenue of over Rs.50 crore from all these three processes. As nothing of these above mentioned things are happening it is great revenue loss for the State.
Respondent No.2 MPCB has however, in its reply dated 29th September 2016 has revealed that the total built up area of the V.C.A. stadium is 19,951.576 sq. mtrs which includes built up area of the stadium, club-house Restaurant, swimming pool building and STP. According to Applicants the present structure has built up area exceeding 20,000 sq. mtrs. and as such requires Environment Clearance. From the facts disclosed before us by the Respondent No.2 MPCB, this claim is debatable.
Keeping aside this debate, we further look for what the cause of action in the present case would be for seeking restoration of the injured or damaged environment. It is the case of the Applicants that the Applicants started making RTI inquiries regarding various illegalities relating to VCA stadium from the year 2013 and onwards and after having gathered information from the MPCB that the VCA Stadium has no environmental clearance from the State, the Applicants decided to approach National Green Tribunal and therefore, the present case is well within the limitation.
Conjoint reading of Section 14 and 15 of the National Green Tribunal Act reveals that essentially any application moved for claiming reliefs there-under must necessarily present a Civil case wherein substantial question relating to environment or environmental damage arising under the enactments specified in the Schedule-I of the Act (including accident occurring while handling any hazardous substance) is involved. We are, therefore, of the considered opinion that it is the substantial question relating to the environment or environmental damage as aforesaid which gives rise to the cause for an action under the provisions of National Green Tribunal Act, 2010. In the present case, the question raised is about restoration of the environmental damage on account of injury to it as a result of raising VCA Stadium without EC or consent to operate under the provisions of Schedule-I Acts viz Environment (Protection) Act, 1986, the Air (Prevention and Control of Pollution) Act 1981 and Water (Prevention and Control of Pollution) Act 1974. As stated herein above, the causes of injury are insufficiency of Effluent Treatment Plant (ETP), open species, parking spaces and tree cover. These facts were very much manifest when the VCA stadium became functional in the year 2008. In our opinion, therefore, the cause of action for the present Application arose first when the VCA stadium became functional. There is nothing in the Application to state that these injuries stood compounded further to actuate the Applicants to initiate the action in the present case as framed.
Section 15 of the National Green Tribunal Act which deals with the Application for restitution/restoration of the environment reads as under :
Section 15 : Relief, compensation and restitution. . (1) The Tribunal may by an order provide.-
(a) Relief and compensation to the victims of pollution and other environmental damage arising under the enactments specified in the Schedule 1 (including accident occurring while handling any hazardous substance),
(b) For restitution of property damaged;
(c) For restitution of the environment for such area or areas, as the Tribunal may think fit.
(2) The relief and compensation and restitution of property and environment referred to in clauses (a) (b) and (c) of sub-section (1) shall be addition to the relief p[aid or payable under the Public Liability Insurance Act, 1991
(3) No application for grant of any compensation or relief or restitution of property or environment under this section shall be entertained by the Tribunal unless it is made within a period of five years from the date on which the cause for such compensation or relief first arose.
The present Application which ought to have been filed within a period 5 year from the date on which the cause of action for restoration first arose i.e. in the year 2008 has been filed on 11th April 2016. The Application is thus found to be beyond the prescribed period under section 15 of the National Green Tribunal Act, 2010 and therefore, cannot be entertained, it being time barred.
The present Application therefore deserves to be rejected. The M.A. No.322/2016 is allowed. Original Application No.33/2016 is rejected and as such Misc. Applications therein M.A.No.317/2016 and M.A. 355/2016 no longer survive and stand disposed of accordingly.