The Supreme Court on Monday declined to shut out a former bureaucrat from pursuing her legal challenge to the statutory approvals secured by the Centre and the Andaman and Nicobar administration for the ₹ 920-billion Great Nicobar Island project, instead asking the Calcutta High Court to fast-track the proceedings and decide the challenge at the earliest.
A bench, comprising Chief Justice of India Surya Kant and Justices Joymalya Bagchi and V Mohana, said that the issue could not be decided merely on the question of maintainability, which had been settled by the high court, and indicated that the larger question of whether the public-interest challenge continued to survive would have to be examined by the high court.
Rather than examining the merits of the challenge at this stage, the bench directed that the matter be taken up expeditiously by the high court. The court’s intervention came during a hearing of the Centre and the Union Territory administration’s challenge to the May 6 order of the Calcutta High Court’s circuit bench at Port Blair, which had rejected their objections to the maintainability of a petition filed by former IAS officer Meena Gupta. Gupta, who has served as secretary in both the Union tribal affairs and environment ministries and was involved in the drafting of the Forest Rights Act, 2006, has challenged the approvals for the project on the ground that they violate the statutory and customary rights of the indigenous Shompen and Nicobarese tribes.
The Attorney General responded that the issue before the court was different and concerned a project of “utmost importance to the nation”. “We will request the chief justice of the high court to decide this expeditiously,” it said.
The high court had taken note of Gupta’s background as a former secretary of the tribal affairs and environment ministries, her involvement in the framing of the Forest Rights Act and her previous association with the Andaman and Nicobar Islands. Her PIL primarily concerns compliance with the Forest Rights Act in areas likely to be affected by the project and issues relating to the rights of the Shompen and Nicobarese communities. Because the petitioner was not a resident of the islands, particularly when the challenge concerned the rights of vulnerable communities who may lack the means to approach the court themselves, it held that the PIL could not be thrown out merely.
The high court had also distinguished Gupta’s challenge from proceedings before the National Green Tribunal concerning the environmental clearance for the project.
