Summary
An applicant holding a mining lease sought clarification that, under the Court's judgment of 26 April 2023 banning mining within one kilometre of a National Park or Wildlife Sanctuary, mining could proceed at a site 2.26 km from the Radhanagari Sanctuary even though it lay inside the notified Eco-Sensitive Zone. The Court rejected the application, clarifying that mining is a prohibited activity under the 2011 ESZ Guidelines and the sanctuary's ESZ notification and is therefore barred anywhere within the ESZ; the one-kilometre rule extends the ban outward only where the ESZ itself is narrower than one kilometre.
Issues
- Whether the direction of 26 April 2023 banning mining within one kilometre of the boundary of a National Park or Wildlife Sanctuary permits mining within a notified Eco-Sensitive Zone at a point more than one kilometre from the Protected Area.
- How the one-kilometre prohibition interacts with the prohibitions in the Guidelines of 9 February 2011 and in the specific ESZ notification for the Radhanagari Wildlife Sanctuary.
- Whether clause 1(b) of paragraph 4 of the Radhanagari ESZ notification of 15 October 2020, which referred mining operations to earlier orders of the Court, survives the judgment of 26 April 2023.
Provisions considered
- Paragraph 4, Table, item A.1(a) and (b), Eco-Sensitive Zone Notification for Radhanagari Wildlife Sanctuary dated 15 October 2020 (under the Environment (Protection) Act, 1986)Clause (a) prohibits all new and existing mining, stone quarrying and crushing units within the ESZ except for the domestic needs of bona fide local residents; clause (b), which referred mining to the Court's 2006 and 2014 orders, is rendered redundant by the judgment of 26 April 2023. (¶¶ 17, 18, 19, 20, 21)
- Annexure I (prohibited activities), first entry: commercial mining, Guidelines of the Ministry of Environment and Forests dated 9 February 2011 on Eco-Sensitive ZonesThe judgment of 26 April 2023 directed MoEF and all States and Union Territories to strictly follow these Guidelines, under which commercial mining is a prohibited activity in an ESZ. (¶¶ 13, 14, 15, 16)
- Article 32, Constitution of IndiaThe application was an interlocutory application in the continuing writ petition under Article 32 in which the forest and ESZ directions have been issued.
Held
- The direction in paragraph 65 of the judgment of 26 April 2023 made the ban on mining within one kilometre of a National Park or Wildlife Sanctuary, earlier confined to Goa, applicable across India, to cover cases where the notified ESZ is narrower than one kilometre. (¶¶ 9, 10, 11, 12)
- Whatever is prohibited under the 2011 Guidelines and whatever is additionally prohibited under the specific ESZ notification of a Protected Area must be strictly followed; since mining is a prohibited activity within an ESZ, it cannot be permitted anywhere in the ESZ even beyond one kilometre from the Protected Area. (¶¶ 15, 16, 22, 23)
- The one-kilometre prohibition operates only where the ESZ boundary is less than one kilometre from the sanctuary; only in such cases does the mining ban travel beyond the ESZ up to one kilometre. (¶ 24)
- Clause 1(b) of paragraph 4 of the Radhanagari ESZ notification of 15 October 2020, which referred mining operations to the Court's orders of 2006 and 2014, pre-dates and is superseded by the judgment of 26 April 2023, which, being delivered by a three-Judge Bench, binds this Bench. (¶¶ 19, 20, 21, 26)
Result
Application rejected; mining within the notified Eco-Sensitive Zone of the Radhanagari Wildlife Sanctuary is not permissible even beyond one kilometre from the sanctuary boundary.