Summary
Following the MoEFCC's 2016 Wood Based Industries Guidelines and a Forest Survey of India assessment of timber from trees outside forests, Uttar Pradesh granted provisional licences to 1,215 new wood-based industries in 2019. The NGT quashed the licensing as resting on an overstated timber estimate. The Supreme Court restored the licences. The FSI's satellite-based assessment was scientific expert evidence that the NGT could not second-guess. Prohibited species may be felled with permission. Counting timber for plywood units would double-count veneer, and the MoEFCC supported the State. The NGT also breached natural justice under Section 19(1) by not hearing licensees, many already operating, and should have tested the applicants' bona fides. Felling of prohibited species was to be strictly regulated.
Issues
- Whether the NGT rightly quashed Uttar Pradesh's grant of provisional licences to new wood-based industries on the ground that the Forest Survey of India had overestimated timber availability.
- Whether the NGT could decide the matter without hearing the affected licensees, and whether it should examine the bona fides of the applicants.
Provisions considered
- Section 19(1), National Green Tribunal Act, 2010The Tribunal is bound by natural justice and erred in not hearing, through representatives or by public notice, provisional licensees whose units were already functioning. (¶ 95)
- Section 20, National Green Tribunal Act, 2010Sustainable development, precaution and polluter pays must be applied together, balancing environmental protection with development rather than in isolation. (¶¶ 87, 88)
- Clauses 4 to 6 and Annexure I, Wood Based Industries (Establishment and Regulation) Guidelines, 2016The State Level Committee validly assessed timber availability through the FSI and adopted IPIRTI consumption figures, which treat plywood units' timber requirement as nil to avoid double counting. (¶¶ 57, 58, 82, 83, 85)
Held
- The FSI's district-wise, satellite-based estimate applied rotation periods and proper statistical methods; courts must not enter the domain of experts, and the NGT erred in brushing it aside as presumptive. (¶¶ 66, 67, 70, 75, 79)
- Prohibited species are not absolutely barred from felling under the 2020 notification, and the CEC's assessment accepted by this Court in 2007 had itself included them, so the NGT wrongly excluded that timber. (¶¶ 76, 77, 79)
- The SLC's decision not to seek a fresh IPIRTI study was reasoned and survives judicial review, and the MoEFCC's support for the State, the investment, employment and farmers' interests were all ignored by the NGT. (¶¶ 81, 83, 84, 91, 94)
- Where the bona fides of applicants seeking orders affecting thousands of jobs are seriously questioned, the NGT should test them; there was scope to infer the litigation served existing or Haryana industries or middlemen. (¶¶ 96, 97, 98, 99)
Result
Appeals allowed; the NGT's order in O.A. Nos. 313, 335 and 396 of 2019 and its review orders set aside and the licensing upheld; the State directed to permit felling of prohibited species only on the conditions of the 07.01.2020 notification and to enforce planting and maintaining ten trees for each tree felled; no costs.