The Centre on Wednesday informed the Madras High Court that it has decided to print a questionnaire related to the draft Environmental Impact Assessment notification in local languages too pursuant to orders passed by the Delhi High Court in a connected case.
First Division Bench of Chief Justice Sanjib Banerjee and Justice P.D. Audikesavalu were told that though such decision had been taken by the Centre, it required sometime for the guidelines or notification in such regard to be placed before the court.
The submission was made during the hearing of a batch of cases filed by environmental activist G. Sundarrajan of Poovulagin Nanbargal, advocate B. Ramkumar Adityan from Thoothukudi and others. The petitioners had insisted upon use of local language and larger public participation in the opinion called for before finalising the draft.
“While the Union takes care of the first limb of the petitioner’s grievance, the Union should also pay attention to the second aspect to which the petitioners have drawn attention: that much wider public participation should be sought in the process,” the Bench said and left it open to the Centre to address that issue by December 8.
