Recently, the Supreme Court took action by serving a notice in response to a petition that questions the constitutionality of the recent modifications made to the Forest (Conservation) Act.

A bench comprising Justice BR Gavai, Aravind Kumar, and Prashant Kumar Mishra was hearing the proceedings as they considered a writ petition. This petition was submitted by retired civil servants, including a former secretary and an additional secretary from the Ministry of Environment, Forest, and Climate Change (MoEFCC). The group of petitioners also includes five former principal chief conservators of forests and former members of a standing committee of the National Board for Wildlife (NBWL).

The petitioners have raised a significant challenge against the Forest (Conservation) Amendment Act of 2023, asserting that this new legislation threatens to undermine India's well-established framework for forest governance. They argue that the amendment constitutes a "complete dereliction of duty" imposed on the State to protect and enhance the environment. 

In their petition, the applicants request that amendment act be invalidated. To support their claim that the recent amendments should be set aside, they invoke several fundamental principles of Indian environmental law. These include the precautionary principle, intergenerational equity, the principle of non-regression, and the public trust doctrine, all of which they allege have been disregarded in the process.

Apart from this, the former civil servants have expressed reservations about the delegated legislative powers granted to the government under the amended act, insisting that the absence of adequate guidelines for exercising such discretion could facilitate forest land diversion without appropriate regulatory oversight.

Furthermore, the petitioners have raised concerns regarding the adequacy of the pre-legislative consultation process. They allege that a parliamentary joint committee responsible for reviewing the legislation failed to give due consideration to vital evidence and neglected essential concerns expressed by diverse stakeholders.

“The joint parliament committee repeatedly overlooked the lack of evidence to support the need for the amendment, completely disregarded the concerns and suggestions put forth by different stakeholders, and blindly accepted submissions made by the MoEFCC. The ministry, as it appears from its submissions – many of which were vague and evasive – based its decisions on the goal of facilitating ‘ease of business’ for those with commercial interests, and this unfortunately appears to be the raison d’être of the impugned legislation.”

Case Title - Ashok Kumar Sharma, IFS (Retd) & Ors. v. Union of India & Ors