Gujarat NGOs demand separate environment court
ngos in Gujarat recently demanded that each state in the country should have a separate environment court. "Gujarat has become the capital of special economic zones (sezs) and the sez Act and rules are diluting existing environment laws,' said Mahesh Pandya of Paryavaran Mitra, an environment activists group in Gujarat.
Environment activists from across the country have written to the Union government demanding a judicial body to deal with environmental cases. They feel it would reduce the burden on the courts and lead to speedy decisions on environmental cases.
The group said the Gujarat Pollution Control Board's poor knowledge of the Right to Information Act deprived people of important information. "Most of our applications remain unanswered due to ignorance on the part of officials. This hampers our activities and we lose our standing in some cases,' said Pandya.