No green law violation in demolition of TS secretariat, rules tribunal
Hyderabad: The National Green Tribunal (NGT) has said that the state government had not disrupted the ecology of Hussainsagar lake while demolishing the Secretariat last year. The tribunal was dealing with a petition filed by TPCC working president A. Revanth Reddy.
“‘As regards the plea for issue of an injunction restraining the authority from giving the environmental clearance, this is not permissible under law. The tribunal cannot restrain any statutory authority from exercising its duty. If anyone is aggrieved by environmental clearance granted, he can challenge this by filing an appeal under the National Green Tribunal Act, 2010,” the tribunal said.
It said, “Under the circumstances, we feel there is no necessity for this tribunal to admit this application, unless it is challenged and set aside by the higher court; and the right of the applicant to challenge the environmental clearance later is also not affected by this order.”
Giving a clean chit to the state government and its machinery, the tribunal went on to say that there was no need to issue further notice to the respondents.
It added: “The joint committee which had conducted an inspection on the lake said that the Hussainsagar lake was not notified as a wetland, and the Wetlands (Conservation and Management) Rules, 2017, do not apply to this. Also, as per GO 168 issued by the erstwhile government of Andhra Pradesh, construction of any building is prohibited only up to a distance of 30 metres from the full-tank level (FTL) of the lake.”
It also noted: “The demolition and re-construction of the Secretariat building is the policy decision of the Telangana government and it is not within the ToR of the joint committee. The joint committee inspected M/s Hyderabad C & D Waste Private Limited, Jeedimetla and cross-verified the quantity of C&D waste disposed of by the R&B department to the waste processing facility and the entire quantity of 1,14,447 MT of C&D waste is transported to the facility.”
The administrative blocks (A, B, C, D, G, H- North, H-South, J, K, and L) were demolished between July 6, 2020 and July 19, 2020.
