Former Civil Servants Challenge 2023 Amendments To Forest Conservation Act; Supreme Court Seeks Centre's Response

The Supreme Court on Friday issued notice on a plea challenging the constitutionality of the recent amendments to the Forest (Conservation) Act.A bench of Justices BR Gavai, Aravind Kumar, and Prashant Kumar Mishra was hearing a writ petition filed by retired civil servants, including a former secretary and an additional secretary to the Ministry of Environment, Forest and Climate Change (MoEFCC). Also among the petitioners are five former principal chief conservators of forests and ex-members of a standing committee of the National Board for Wildlife (NBWL).The petitioners have contested the constitutionality of the Forest (Conservation) Amendment Act, 2023, citing concerns that the new law would significantly undermine the country’s long-standing forest governance framework. They have said that the amendment represents a ‘complete dereliction of duty’ imposed on the State to protect and improve the environment. Accordingly, emphasising the adverse implications of the amendments on the environment, biodiversity, and climate resilience on the one hand; and the constitutional imperatives enshrined in Articles 14, 21, 48A, 51(c), and 51A(g) of the Constitution on the other hand, the petitioners have asked for the impugned amendment act to be invalidated. In support of their contention that the recent amendments ought to be set aside, they have also invoked several seminal principles of Indian environmental law, such as precautionary principle, intergenerational equity, principle of non-regression and public trust doctrine, all of which have allegedly been overlooked.The 2023 Amendment Act, it has been contended, restricts the scope of the Forest (Conservation) Act 1980 by effectively altering the definition of forest land that falls within its purview. Such a change, according to the petitioner, contravenes the principles set forth by the Supreme Court in its 1996 order in TN Godavarman Thirumulpad. This is an omnibus forest protection matter in which the court issued the longest-standing continuing mandamus in the field of environmental litigation. Since 1996, when the writ jurisdiction of the court was first invoked by a plea to protect the Nilgiris forest, numerous orders have been passed on a vast array of issues, such as deforestation, logging, mining, compensatory afforestation, and endangered species.The former civil servants have further argued that the amendments allow for exemptions for various projects and activities in forest lands, potentially serving commercial interests at the expense of the broader public welfare. The petition states –“In the [1996] order, the court held that the aim of the Forest (Conservation) Act is to protect against ecological imbalance which would necessarily require ‘forest land’ in Section 2 of the act to include not only forests as understood in the dictionary sense but also any area recorded as forest in the government record irrespective of the nature of ownership or classification. Forest lands which until recently enjoyed the protection of law due to this expansive interpretation provided by this court will now be stripped of any legal protection. The 2023 Amendment Act arbitrarily permits several categories of projects and activities in forest land, while exempting them from the purview of the Forest (Conservation) Act. These projects and activities are vaguely defined in the impugned law, and could be interpreted in a manner that serves vested commercial interests, at the cost of much larger public interest.”Each diversion of land without any cumulative ceiling being prescribed across the country, the petitioners have further argued, will ‘pockmark’ our forests with cancerously growing deforested islands and fragment them, causing enormous ecological loss. They have also raised concerns over the ‘vagueness’ surrounding project definitions and the potential for large-scale destruction of forest lands. To illustrate their contention, the petitioners have referred to provisions pertaining to security-related infrastructure, plantations, and reforested areas.Apart from this, the former civil servants have expressed reservations about the delegated legislative powers granted to the government under the amended act, insisting that the absence of adequate guidelines for exercising such discretion could facilitate forest land diversion without appropriate regulatory oversight.Notably, the petitioners have also called into question the rigour of the pre-legislative consultation process, alleging that a joint committee of parliament entrusted to review the legislation disregarded crucial evidence and overlooked critical concerns voiced by various stakeholders –“The joint parliament committee repeatedly overlooked the lack of evidence to support the need for the amendment, completely disregarded the concerns and suggestions put forth by different stakeholders, and blindly accepted submissions made by the MoEFCC. The ministry, as it appears from its submissions – many of...

Former Civil Servants Challenge 2023 Amendments To Forest Conservation Act; Supreme Court Seeks Centre's Response

Awstika Das

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