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The Ministry of Environment, Forests, and Climate Change granted an environmental clearance (EC) for a proposed integrated steel plant in the Jagatsinghpur district on September 15, 2023. An appeal against the EC was filed with the National Green Tribunal (NGT), but it was dismissed because it was submitted after the 30-day window for limitation.
Environmental activist Prafulla Samantara, together with two other individuals, filed an appeal with the NGT on December 14, 2023, requesting a pardon for the delay. Their justification was that they obtained a copy of the letter regarding the award of EC only on October 4.
However, the bench of B Amit Sthalekar (judicial member) and Dr Arun Kumar Verma (expert member) on Tuesday said, “The record shows that the appeal had already been drafted and verified before the notary public, Bhubaneswar, on October 18, 2023. Therefore, the averments of the delay condonation application stand falsified by the documents on record.”
The bench also observed, “There is no explanation that if the memo of appeal was ready and verified on October 18, 2023 why it could not be filed by November 4, 2023 and was filed only on December 14, 2023 after a further 26 days.”
“Therefore, it is not correct for the appellants to say that since the documents were voluminous and there was some medical exigency in the family of the lawyer it took him some time to ‘draft’ the appeal,” the bench added, while dismissing the appeal “as being barred by limitation”.
Samantara had first challenged the grant of EC in April 2022. Acting on it, the NGT directed the ministry on March 20, 2023 to consider the EC afresh and take a decision within three months.
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