A Decade of National Green Tribunal of India: Judgement Analysis and Observations

Established in 2010, it has been more than a decade since the establishment of the National Green Tribunal in India and in this context, the effectiveness of the National Green Tribunal as an institution comes to the forefront specically from the lens of access to justice. To ll in the gap that is existing in the environmental area in the social and economic dimension role of an effective institution created for environment protection is a matter of utmost relevance. The judicial mechanism as a means of access to justice in environmental matters as one of the pillars of environmental governance is seen as means for achieving environmental justice and bringing in environmental democracy. National Green Tribunal is a quasi-judicial body dealing specically with environment-related civil litigations, which brings about the plurality of justice with its multidisciplinary approach. This paper through the analysis of judgments of the year 2019 of the specic months where the tribunal has done signicant intervention, through analysis looks into the impact the judgments have concerning environmental protection and innovations brought and jurisprudence created through its judgments and impact on the access to environmental justice.


Introduction
Specialized environmental courts are the forums for the realization of access to justice in environmental matters. There have been specialized environmental courts existing for a long time like in Australia, New Zealand, Scandinavia, and the U.S.A however, a discussion on the National Green Tribunal of India in the major developing country becomes of utmost importance. Specialized environmental tribunals are one of the most dramatic establishments of the 21 st century. In the 1970s, only a handful number of the environmental court tribunal existed and now over 1200 environmental court tribunal exist at the national regional level in developed, developing countries, and Environmental court tribunals are dramatically changing the way environmental disputes are resolved. (G. Gill, 2017). The National Green Tribunal of India is the pioneer in developing countries as far as the establishment of the specialized tribunal in environmental matters is concerned. It makes a very good study established over a decade ago. The objective behind its establishment was to bring the realization of the right to a healthy environment under Art 21 and bring more Access to Justice in environmental matters. It was established through the National Green Tribunal Act in 2010. The authorizing legislation gives it a broad trial, Appellate jurisdiction overall environmental and natural resources law, review only by the supreme court, exibility in its procedure, strict standards for judicial appointments, recognition of the right to a healthy environment, some of the broadest principles on this planet for public participation and access to justice and a mandate to apply international treaties and principles.
Access to information, public participation, and access to justice are important elements of environmental democracy. The National Green Tribunal of India established in 2011 is a giant step towards achieving environmental democracy. Tracing the historical background, which led to the creation of this specialized tribunal, is several international conferences and declarations in the international context. The preamble of the National Green Tribunal Act mentions that since India, being party to the environmental cases frequently involve assessment of scienti c data, setting up environmental courts on a regional basis with a legally quali ed judge and two experts would help speed the judicial process. The Against this backdrop, the National green tribunal of India was created. One of the major declarations that are the precursor for giving impetus is the Rio declaration speci cally principle 10 of the declaration.
The Rio declaration saw the participation of various countries and happened in the year 1992 and 178 governments adopted the Rio Declaration at the earth summit. Principle 10 of the Rio declaration recognized the fact the environmental issues are best handled by appropriate access to information, opportunity to participate in the decision-making process, and effective access to judicial and administrative proceedings including redress and remedy for all concerned citizens. After the Rio declaration, some 80 governments enacted laws that provide greater access to information (Pring & Pring, 2016). The challenge is now the implementation of these laws. Governments have provided access to information with the enactment of these laws and have done little in making the citizens part of the decision-making process or in coming up with new ways to resolve the disputes justly and effectively. In this context, the role of specialized environmental courts for providing access to environmental justice comes to the center stage.

Purpose of National Green Tribunal
The idea behind creating or improving environmental courts is the desire to improve the third pillar of environmental democracy (Pring & Pring, 2016). The National Green tribunal of India was created for speedy environmental justice in environmental matters. It was established on 18 October 2010 under the National Green Tribunal Act 2010. The preamble to the NGT Act 2010 starts with emphasizing the purpose for which the National Green Tribunal is created.
"An Act to provide for the establishment of a National Green Tribunal for the effective and expeditious disposal of cases relating to environmental protection and conservation of forests and other natural resources including enforcement of any legal right relating to the environment and giving relief and compensation for damages to persons and property and matters connected therewith or incidental thereto." The tribunal has a dedicated civil jurisdiction in environmental matters, which helps in reducing the burden of the higher courts. The Tribunal is mandated to make and endeavor for disposal of applications or appeals nally within 6 months of the ling of the same. The tribunal has original, appellate and exclusive jurisdiction. The original jurisdiction(S-14 of the NGT Act) covers all the cases; which are substantial questions relating to the environment (including enforcement of any legal right relating to the enforcement ) arising out of the implementation of the seven laws The Water (Prevention and Control  2002. Victims of environmental damage including accidents occurring while handling hazardous wastes can approach the court to seek relief and compensation (section-15 of the NGT Act). The tribunal can order for restoration of the damaged property and the environment. Any case for relief and compensation has to be brought to the tribunal within ve years from the date such cause for such relief and compensation rst arose. After that, a grace period of sixty days is given. In the case of appellate jurisdiction(S-16 of the NGT Act), the tribunal hears and decides cases in which regulatory approval or consent granted or rejected by the relevant government agency is being challenged. These approvals relate to the seven aforementioned laws. As far as the exclusive jurisdiction(S-17) of NGT is concerned in cases relating to compensation and relief for environmental damage and those cases, in which the appeals are being led before the regulatory approvals can be brought only before the tribunal. Such cases cannot be entertained by other courts and in case; they are court need to ask the parties to approach the tribunal for adjudication.
As per the NGT Act, an aggrieved person can le a case before the tribunal-it could be an individual, a company, a rm, an association of person(like NGO) even if it is not registered or incorporated, a trustee, a local authority, a government body(Like the SPCB, etc.).The person need not be directly affected by the project or development in question but could be any person who is interested in protecting and preserving the environment. The Principal Bench of the Tribunal is situated in New Delhi, with four Zonal Benches in Bhopal, Kolkata, Pune, and Chennai. The powers of the tribunal are the same as that of civil court including the power to summon any person to examine witnesses receive evidence on a davits, review its decisions, etc. It can regulate its procedure and is guided by principles of natural justice. The Act requires the tribunal to consider the principle of sustainable development, the precautionary principle, and the polluter pay principle while deciding cases and the no-fault liability principle is to be applied in cases involving an accident. Failure to comply with the orders of the tribunal could lead to a ne or imprisonment of the person responsible or both depending on the fact situation.
Appeal to Supreme Court is made if any of the parties is not happy with the decision of the tribunal and it can be led before the Supreme Court of India within 90 days from the date of the tribunal's order later if su cient cause for delay is shown to the Supreme Court. The National Green Tribunal is quasi-judicial and has limited powers. Hence it becomes important to analyze the role of the National Green tribunal as far as access to justice is concerned.
Very few studies have been conducted as to the effectiveness and functioning of the National green tribunal of India as an institution and its role in access to environmental justice. (Vasan, 2021) in his work has done a case study of the case led by the indigenous communities against the hydel power project in the Himalayan state of Himachal Pradesh and how opposing views are taken by con icting parties and green narrative is taken by the National Green Tribunal in such cases by balancing the con icts. (G. N. Gill 2020) while discussing plurality of the environmental justice brought by the National Green tribunal with its multidisciplinary approach created a decade ago. She argues about the internal and external forces affecting the NGT. It analyses the reasons and actions of the principal actors in supporting NGT and the ones who are affected by its growth activities and popularity by the use of transmigration of theory. (G. N. Gill, 2019) has used the reported cases of NGT to analyze the applicability of precautionary principle and the legal certainty and uncertainty and the proof and disproof that it requires in the practical context while applying the precautionary principle in its decision. (G. N. Gill, 2016) discusses the role of technical and expert members in the decision-making process. She argues further that despite uncertainty in science the expert members play a central role rather than the marginal in the decision-making process. Interview access and data have provided in her work better insights into the role of technical and expert members in internal decision-making in NGT. (G. N. Gill, 2014) discusses sec 20 of the Ngt Act, which mandates the application of international principles like sustainable development, the precautionary principle, and the polluter pay principle by NGT. It addresses the application of these principles in the Indian context and shows India's commitment towards the international community for environment protection (Dilay, Diduck, & Patel, 2020) discusses the effectiveness of the NGT in resolving disputes arising from the Environment Impact assessment and the procedural aspect of environment justice(Chowdhury & Srivastava, 2018) discusses the National Green Tribunal which is the newest of the tribunal; established after the constitutional amendment procedure provided for their creation, speci cally focussing on its jurisdiction.(Rengarajan, Dhivya, Purvaja, Ramesh,2018) discusses the background to the creation of the National green tribunals and the effectiveness of NGT as an institution by analyzing the judgments given by NGT in the year 2016.He has tried to identify through his work the broad areas in which environmental disputes come to Ngt like air, water, etc., and what are the areas of greatest con ict. (Patra & Krishna, 2015) in his work has done an empirical analysis of the judgments from its inception in October 2010 to December 2013.He has done impact analysis and areas of con ict although he is seeing NGT as a positive step towards environmental justice. (Shrotria, 2015) in her work through the analysis of Ngt judgments after four years of its establishment brings out the jurisdiction, powers, and functions of NGT in effecting environment justice. She has also traced the environmental jurisprudence evolved and how the tribunal is playing important role in access to justice in environmental matters.. exible, innovative and provides value-adding function. (Amirante, 2011) in his work discusses the advantages and disadvantages of the environmental tribunals from a comparative perspective and sees it as an important tool for environmental protection in the Asian Region for sustainable development. (Sharma, 2008) talks about the green courts to be independent of political in uence and may be established as a specialist division within the high court as a substitute.

Methodology
Till now the cases that have come before the NGT in a decade of its establishment from its inception till 30/06/2021 as an institution is 35258 out of which 32936 has been disposed of and2322 is pending before the tribunal.( https://greentribunal.gov.in/).All of them are related to the environment from a broader perspective but there is a need to know speci c areas like afforestation, forest clearance, coastal zone, etc, which is brought to the National Green Tribunal as a way of petitions and appeals. Since there is a gap in the literature and limited studies as to the analysis of the judgments after 2015. Hence, the present paper will delve into the question of the role of the National green tribunal and its impact is concerned through the analysis of signi cant interventions done by the NGT with special emphasis on the cases of the months January, February, and March of the year 2019. Hence, the methodology followed for functional analysis is the assessment of the corpus of the judgments for speci c months which were signi cant interventions done by the National Green tribunal. All the signi cant interventions for the year January, February and March 2019 has been downloaded from the website of the national green tribunal (https://greentribunal.gov.in/). The analysis intends to focus on several key issues. These include the growth and nature of the NGT's caseload over a period after 2015 and the expansion of the caseload of the principal and regional benches. The judgments were analyzed to learn the details of the plaintiffs and the defendants to understand the terms who are the people approaching frequently approaching the National Green tribunal when it comes to access to environmental justice. Based on the judgments the core points related to environmental issues were classi ed and analyzed as to what are the issues that bring plaintiffs to the NGT? In addition, the analysis of the number of cases that come before the NGt is increasing or decreasing was done from the website of the NGT. Key environmental factors that in uence the access to environmental justice are the National Green Tribunal the decisionmakers and the pollution control boards which are in uencers.

Results And Discussion
Based on the analysis of the judgments there has been an increase in the number of the cases of National Green tribunal with the growth of industrialization and development in a developing country like India. The e ciency of the tribunal as an institution analyzing the data of the total cases that have come before the tribunal as a whole and how many have been disposed and how many are pending. As per the data on the NGT website ( https://greentribunal.gov.in/). As on 30/06/2021 Figure 1 created as per data provided on the website gives the picture that the National Green tribunal, as an institution is very e cient with the number of cases that are coming to it and amount of the cases that has been disposed and pendency of the cases, is very low. As per the National Green Tribunal Act, the tribunal is under the mandate to resolve the cases expeditiously and the tribunal was established with the view to bring speedy justice in environmental matters and as per the Act, the tribunal is under the mandate to dispose of the cases within six months. In addition, it can be concluded through the data that the Tribunal has been achieving the objective of the speedy disposal of environmental matters, as the pendency of cases is very low while the disposal rate is very high as an institution and in the Indian context where cases load is very high.
The National Green Tribunal to provide greater access to justice was established with a principal bench at Delhi and the zonal benches which includes western zonal bench at Pune, southern zonal bench at Chennai, eastern zonal bench at Kolkata, Coastal zonal bench at Bhopal, and e ciency-wise as one looks to the data for bench wise performance as far as pendency of cases is concerned.
As per the data taken from the National Green tribunal website and looking to the pendency of the cases, zone-wise ( gure 2) brings a clear picture as to how the benches have performed in terms of e ciency since its inception. The maximum number of pendency is at the Pune bench, which is the west zone bench while the minimum number of pendency is at the Bhopal bench, which is the central zone bench while in the case of other benches the pendency is in between the two benches. The category of cases adjudicated by the National Green Tribunal in these months is an original application led by the pollution control boards which are the implementing authorities and seeking for enforcement of conditions imposed on polluters, aggrieved persons concerning environmental issues falling under the purview of enactments falling under the purview of the Act, seeking compensation for pollution, environmental damage, etc. appeals from aggrieved person and NGOs for noncompliance of the project authorities the conditions imposed under the environmental and forest clearance given by the ministry of environment and forest for the development project, non-compliance with the norms, appeals from the industries against the decision of the pollution control board. The issues that have come before the National Green Tribunal for adjudication where the tribunal has done the signi cant intervention in these months deal with the following issues majorly dealing with Water pollution(e uent plants, common treatment e uent plant, cleaning of river), solid waste management, coal mining, industrial activities, environmental damage, Air pollution(thermal power stations, industry pollution ), groundwater contamination, environmental clearance, Noise pollution, project planning, Forest land, outing environmental norms, biomedical waste, Air pollution, sand mining, river pollution, noise pollution.

Judgment analysis
The analysis of various judgments and impact the National Green Tribunal has created by way of resolving the disputes is explicit with the detailed analysis done concerning each of the subject areas where the issues were raised on various categories of the subject matter. For the month of January, Magistrate to forthwith prepare an action plan for compliance of law particularly the biomedical waste and solid waste management Rules and furnish. In these cases, the court has given directions to the government authorities to giving compensation to defaulters and setting up expert committees wherever required, create the oversight committee, furnishing guarantee for performance and payment of damages in cases of environmental degradation. &CC to furnish data and strengthen the mechanism to periodically monitor the compliance of environmental clearance conditions. However, the data furnished is wholly inadequate to evaluate the effectiveness of the functioning of the mechanism and merely mentions gures of the projects monitored, without mentioning the extent of defaults found and further action is taken. Taking note of the omission, the Tribunal directed the o cial who has furnished the data to remain present in a person with the entire relevant data, improper disposal of the y ash by the Thermal Power Plants ( Hindon which has resulted in diseases and deaths of inhabitants of the area, had appointed a supervisory committee to effectively monitor the progress. So far, the prosecution has been initiated against 118 non-complying industries in Muzaffarnagar, Shamli, Meerut, Baghpat, Ghaziabad, and Gautam Budh Nagar in Uttar Pradesh. Based on the recommendations, the Tribunal has directed UP to prepare an action plan to ensure the water quality of river Hindon at least meets the water quality criteria for bathing and furnish a performance guarantee of Rs.5 crores. Signi cantly, the Tribunal directed that failure to implement the action plan within six months will result in forfeiture of the guarantee, control of Analyzing the remedies that have been given by the tribunal they fall within in the form of directions to defaulters or by Setting up of committees, joint committees, oversight committees, audit of the pollution board, compensation, creation of task force for compliance, imposing a high penalty on the state as high as up to Rs 1crore, performance guarantee for the execution of directions, environmental compensation by drawing a scienti c formula, compensation payment, joint inspection, monitoring committees, furnish data, action plan. The tribunal has employed such directions thus played an investigative role at times at other time has played a consultative role by consultation with the stakeholders and by setting up of the specialist committee, it has brought in in dialogue between the stakeholders and brought in, a participative approach which can bring contradictory claims and positions. Stakeholder's role has broad impacts in the cases of river cleaning and air pollution. Specialized committees promote a cooperative approach but at the same x the accountability of the stakeholders who are involved. Thus in this way, the National Green Tribunal has promoted greater access to justice by resolving the disputes with the participative approach by involving the stakeholders. The NGT has a huge amount of pressure as it is under the mandate to resolve the disputes within six months and to bring in speedy justice in environmental matters. However, the way NGT is bringing in democratic ways of resolving disputes is bringing in more environmental democracy and ushering in an era of better access to environmental justice. Over a decade of its establishment with the development and evolving complexity of environmental problems, the NGT has been successful in promoting access to environmental justice by bringing a participative approach to resolving disputes and establishing itself as an e cient tribunal with a very little rate of pendency of disputes.

Declarations
Ethics approval and consent to participate-NA Consent for publication-NA Availability of data and materials-data has been taken from the o cial website of National Green Tribunal of India ( https://greentribunal.gov.in/). Environmental judgments delivered by the NGT from 2015-20