Environmental Impact Assessment Notification 2020 and Constitutional Law (Paper)

  • Meenal Maheshwari, MNLU Nagpur
  • December 27, 2020

Content :

The Environment Impact Assessment notification, 2020 released by the government of India brings in various new changes to the earlier legislation. In the wake of recent ecologically damaging accidents like the Assam Baghjan oilfield fire or Vizag gas leak, the role of EIA comes to the forefront. It thus becomes important to analyze if the current notification is doing enough to prevent future industrial accidents. The research analyzes the legislation to check whether it is in consonance with constitutional law or not. For this, the provisions of the law are tested to see if they protect the fundamental right to clean and pollution-free environment, promote participatory democracy, uphold international treaty obligations and maintains the balance of federalism. The research finds that the legislations fails in all these regards and is skewed in favor of the project proponents to improve the ease of doing business. The author of this research feels that the government must realize the importance of balancing between environment and economy and not destroy one to save the other. The parliament must also improve the baseline surveys, make the process more inclusive, increase accountability and remove ex post facto legitimization of violations. The government should take one step forward instead of taking two backwards. Only then can our common environment be saved.