Panaji (Goa) The High Court has finally ended the suspense over the Goa’s jurisdiction in NGT. The court has quashed the notification of Union ministry of Environment, Forest and Climate Change which had transferred the Goa’s jurisdiction in National Green Tribunal from Pune to New Delhi.
The Bench comprising Justice G S Patel and Justice N D Sardessai has also recommended that the Goa government should set up circuit bench of NGT in the State.
“We quash and strike down the notification of August 10, 2017 in so far as it transfers the jurisdiction of the western zonal bench from pune to New Delhi in regard to the state of Goa,” the double bench ruled today.
“We say nothing about the territories of Daman, Diu, Dadra and Nagar Haveli simply because there is no challenge in that regard before us,” the Judges ruled.
The court had given its interim order on August 10, 2017 saying that the no files should be transferred from the Western Region Bench to New Delhi. “In view of our judgment, the Western Region Bench will therefore, now be entitled to proceed with the hearings of the cases filed before it,” the order states.
The high court had taken suo motto cognizance of the news report in several newspaper that matters before the NGT, Western Zone coming up from Goa had been transferred by a notification of the ministry of environment and
forests to the NGT’s principal bench in New Delhi.
Two more Public Interest Ligitations were filed before the Bench on the same day by different social activists.
During the trial, the union ministry of environment, forest and climate change and Goa government had filed different affidavits. State government had suggests that the circuit of bench of NGT can be established in Goa, but had said that they don’t have a proper place to set it up.
The court in its order has ruled that “it seems to be common ground that a circuit bench in Panaji is an optimal solution. For whatever reason that has not happened, and we do not believe we can issue a mandamus to command the setting up of a circuit bench in Panaji.”
The bench in its verdict has hailed Goa as being ‘extra ordinary state.” The order reads “above all, there is one overreaching concern. This is an extra ordinary state, in more ways than one, a place where, perhaps more than anywhere else, sky, sea and earth meet.”
From horizon to horizon, it is a land of abundant richness. It is a land of confluences, where diverse strands meet and co-exist; and in a time of apparently incessant strife and discord, it is still a mostly liberal land, the bench mentioned.
The court has ruled that if the NGT in Pune has so very many cases from Goa, it is not because – or not just because—the people of Goa are litigious; if true, that may only speak to their continued faith in the legal system and its processes. It is because they perceive that there is something of value here to protect.
The bench said “though we cannot command it, we can most emphatically commend it that both the State government and MOEF must immediately take up with all seriousness the proposal to establish a Circuit bench in Goa.”
