Livemint: New Delhi: Tuesday, May
17, 2016.
Noting that
suppression of an expert committee report regarding India’s coastal areas gives
rise to many “suspicions”, the Central Information Commission (CIC) asked
environment minister Prakash Javadekar’s office to make the report and the
action taken on it public within a month.
The report
was submitted to the environment ministry in January 2015.
CIC also
reiterated its earlier order to the effect that every central government
minister is a public authority under the Right to Information (RTI) Act, 2005.
The decision
came on an application by environmentalist Kanchi Kohli who in February 2015
sought a copy of the Shailesh Nayak Committee report but was denied one by the
environment ministry, which said that it could not share the report “until
accepted”.
In 1991, the
first coastal regulation zone (CRZ) notification was issued under the
Environment Protection Act, 1986. The notification gives powers to the central
government to restrict industrial activities and processes in an area for the
protection of the environment along the over 7,500-km coastline of the country.
This
notification was amended 25 times before it was comprehensively revised in
2011. Then, in June 2014, the ministry constituted a committee under Shailesh
Nayak, the then secretary in the ministry of earth sciences, to look into
issues raised by various coastal states regarding the 2011 CRZ notification.
The committee
submitted its report in January 2015, which since then has been kept under
complete secrecy by the ministry.
“The Commission
finds the issue of disclosure of report of Shailesh Nayak Committee is very
vital and of great public interest. If the report of the committee discussed
the ‘errors and inconsistencies’ of the CRZ notification, they should be made
known to the public… so that there can be a fair chance of analysing
scientific, administrative or legal basis of these amendments, that might have
been identified by the committee,” said information commissioner M. Sridhar
Acharyulu in his order on Friday (13 May).
“Sustainability
of development in coastal zones is a serious concern. In this perspective,
sustaining common use areas like beaches and creeks and access to the shore for
everyday occupations is gradually becoming a challenge for many coastal
communities. When these aspects are analysed, discussed and reported by an
expert committee, there appears no justification in refusing the disclosure of
report,” observed Acharyulu in the order while adding that the ministry
official did not even mention the exact grounds for denial of the information
sought.
He said a
public authority cannot invent a new defence or exemption such as “the report
is under submission”, “file is pending consideration” and “unless approved it
cannot be given”, which are not available under RTI Act.
He noted that
“such an illegal refusal will amount to denial of information which would
invite penal proceedings” under the RTI Act and asked the public information
officer of the ministry to explain why penalty should not be imposed on it for
refusing a copy of the report for no valid reason.
During the
hearing, Kohli had highlighted that even as a decision on the Shailesh Nayak
Committee report is pending, the ministry has notified seven amendments to the
CRZ notification since January 2015, facilitating heavy construction, coastal
roads and monuments in CRZ areas.
On this,
Acharyulu noted in his order that, “if the report has discussed the objectives
of CRZ, they should have disclosed the report before initiating process of
amendment to the CRZ regulations”.
“It is the
duty of environment ministry to justify relaxations made without considering
the ‘report’ of Shailesh Nayak. The suppression of the Shailesh Nayak report
while issuing successive amendments gives rise to many suspicions, which need
to be cleared,” Acharyulu added.
“It has taken
14 months to get an order to bring the report out in public. The critical thing
about the report is that it is actually the road map for the future of CRZ. We
don’t know how much ministry has relied on this report while amending CRZ rules
since January 2015. Why ministry did not want to make it public,” said Kohli,
legal research director at the Namati Environmental Justice Programme of the
Centre for Policy Research, a Delhi-based non-governmental organization working
on a range of policies, including environmental issues.
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