Hyderabad High Court directed the forest officials of Andhra Pradesh to serve notice on a quarry owner in Visakhapatnam as to why action should not be initiated against him for felling 1,396 trees.
A division bench comprising Justice Ramesh Ranganathan and Justice J. Uma Devi passed the order while disposing a Public Interest Litigation (PIL) petition seeking to declare as illegal the issuing of licence to K. Loavaraju to mine Laterite in Visakhapatnam. The bench instructed the Visakhapatnam Regional Forest Officer to confirm existence of the trees before the quarry owner started operations in Thorada village of Nathavaram mandal.
The RFO should estimate value of the trees felled, collect the money from the quarry owner and deposit with the Gram Panchayat concerned. He should also ascertain if the quarry owner’s claim of planting more than 12,000 trees in the mine area was true.
The bench directed the RFO to also confirm if such plantation of trees and their maintenance would be sufficient for reforestation compensation for the the trees he had felled earlier. It instructed the AP Chief Conservator of Forests to assess the number of vehicles the quarry owner would ply to transport the mineral through the Sarugudu Reseve Forest area and the possible threat to wildlife along with ecological damage it would result in.
The quarry owner should not ply vehicles through the Reserve forest area till the Chief Conservator presents his report on the matter and he should use an alternative route for transporting the mineral, the order said. The bench, however, turned down the petitioner’s prayer to direct the quarry owner to construct a compound wall in the buffer zone of Sarugudu reserve forest. No such condition was imposed by government while issuing license to him, the order said.
Though the instructions issued by the Collector in the matter had no statutory sanction, the judiciary should scrutinise all points in environmental matters in the backdrop of the Directive Principles of State policy enunciated in Article 48A and the fundamental duties in Article 51A of the constitution, the bench observed.
