Supreme Court sets up second forest bench

The Supreme Court today announced the creation of second special green bench to deal with matters relating to environment and forest.

“We are going to divide the forest bench into two parts,” Chief Justice S H Kapadia said, adding the new bench will be headed by Justice B Sudershan Reddy that will sit on Monday and hear matters on implementation of directives passed by it.

The CJI said the bench headed by him will look after the matters in which norms are to be laid down. Justices Aftab Alam and K S Radhakrishnan are the other members.

Justice Kapadia said the matters relating to mining will be heard by the bench headed by him which will conduct the proceedings on Fridays.

The Chief Justice said matters would be taken up for hearing in a chronological order and no adjournment would be given and suggested the Ministry of Environment and Forest be ready with all the matters.

“We will start hearing the matter from next Friday onwards and take it up on every Friday till we finish,” he said.

Attorney General G E Vahanvati said the Ministry would be ready to assist the Bench which in the past 15 years had passed several landmark judgements, orders and directions for implementing laws on conservation of forest and environment.

The petitions challenging the installation of statues of Dalit leaders, including Uttar Pradesh Chief Minister Mayawati, at a park in Noida which allegedly has adverse impact on Okhla bird sanctuary is on the top of the list for hearing.

The Noida park matter will be followed by the hearing of cases in which Municipal Corporation of Delhi has accused the Railways of violating environmental norms in outdoor advertisement.

After finishing these two matters, the bench will examine the allegation against the French cement giant Lafarge that it was violating the laws for carrying out mining in the forest of Meghalaya for its plant in Bangladesh.