National Green Tribunal goes online

Legal Reforms

With the commencement of online access on the website, the aggrieved persons may approach National Green Tribunal (NGT) from any part of the country without the necessity of approaching the Principal Bench or Regional Benches of the Green Tribunal, physically.

Environmental justice, too, is a part of social justice. To enhance the access to justice under Article 39A of the Constitution of India, NGT came up with the idea of filing and receiving the applications online by the aggrieved party. After the commencement of this procedure, the aggrieved party would have online access to the justice system from any part of the country.  The matter will be dealt with by the concerned bench as per the rules.

This step for online access was the need of the hour, as there are only five benches of NGT in the country- with New Delhi being the Principal Bench, Pune (Western Zone Bench), Bhopal (Central Zone Bench), Chennai (Southern Bench) and Kolkata (Eastern Bench). Earlier, people having complaint regarding violations in environmental law from a particular area had to approach the bench assigned in their region. This was a tedious and time-consuming process. The new system would benefit in reducing the inconvenience caused by travelling from one state to the other.

Under the present practice, the Tribunals have been hearing the matter of Regional Benches through video-conferencing due to paucity of Expert members and to prevent the delay in justice due to administrative delays.

With such increasing degradation in the environment, the violation of environmental law is widespread across the country. In this light and in view of the rising concern among the citizens, the NGT has taken this step for environment protection and conservation. Through this, NGT has opened the e-portal for the citizens to file an environmental grievance merely by accessing and registering on the website. The application can be filed by following simple rules and procedures followed by payment of applicable fee.

Also under this recent development, it was added that in the cases where the litigant is unable to be present physically or through video conferencing, the NGT may proceed on its merit and the orders of the Tribunal shall be made available online.

The development is sure to bring some relief and speedy delivery of justice under the environmental law. The key features of this new system are-

  1. 24 X 7 option available to register an application.
  2. Complete online process.
  3. Minimalized costs and less time consuming process.
  4. No hard copies filing which in turn saves paper.
  5. Ease of access.
  6. Simplified and User-friendly procedure.

Due to lack of means to approach and access the authority, many environmental violations go unpunished or even unacknowledged in remote areas. With the increasing need to protect and preserve the environment, the NGT going online is a welcome step encouraging active participation by people towards conservation of environment.

The user manual for the e-portal can be found here-

https://ngtonline.nic.in/newsite/sites/default/files/all_documents/User Manual_efiling_NGT.pdf

By-

Ayushi Mishra

Student Reporter, INBA