The National Green Tribunal (NGT) recently imposed a cost of ₹1 on the Surveyor General of India for failing to appear in a case concerning the large-scale felling of trees during the construction of the Kawar Marg road in Uttar Pradesh.
A Coram of Justices Prakash Shrivastava, Sudhir Agarwal and Arun Kumar Tyagi along with expert member Dr. Afroz Ahmad noted that the Surveyor General was not virtually present before the tribunal and had also not applied for exemption from personal appearance.
"Neither the response has been filed by the Surveyor General, Survey of India, nor he is virtually present today in compliance of the above order. We have also not received any application from the Surveyor General, Survey of India seeking exemption from virtual presence," the NGT said.
The order was passed in an Original Application where the Tribunal is examining the issue of the proposed cutting of at least 30,000 trees, of which 17,450 have already been felled during the construction of a 111 km stretch of the Kawar Marg from Muradnagar to Purkaji near the Uttarakhand border.
On July 8 and 25, the NGT had directed the Surveyor General to file satellite images showing the extent of trees cut.
Following non-compliance with these directions, the NGT on August 9 issued notice to the Surveyor General and sought his virtual presence to explain his non-compliance and to file the images.
During the next hearing on September 20, the Surveyor General did not appear virtually, prompting the Tribunal to impose a symbolic ₹1 cost.
"The above repeated directions of the Tribunal have not been complied with by Surveyor General. Thus we impose the cost of Rs. 1/- Rupee One) upon the Surveyor General, Survey of India for such conduct. Though we were prompted to take strict action against him, at this stage we have restrained ourselves expecting that a high officer like Surveyor General, Survey of India will have some regard to the orders of the Courts and Tribunals," the NGT stated.
Apart from this, the Tribunal was informed by the State of Uttar Pradesh that construction work on the Kawar Marg road has been temporarily suspended due to ongoing rains. The ASG also assured the Tribunal that no further tree felling would occur until the next hearing.
The matter will be heard next on October 4.
The State of Uttar Pradesh was represented by Additional Solicitor General KM Nataraj, Additional Advocate General (AAG) Garima Prasad and advocates Vijendra Mahndiyan, Apurva Singh and Divyakshi Singh.
Advocate Akash Vashishtha represented the intervening applicants, environmentalists Vikrant Tongad and Satendra Singh and Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) leader Rajendra Tyagi.
[Read Order]