The Times of India

TNN | Mar 16, 2015


NEW DELHI: Amid calls for balancing economic development with environment protection, a senior Supreme Court judge on Sunday said if the apex court's actions to save the environment amounted to judicial overreach, then it would continue for a long time.

"If we find that it (apex court's direction to save environment) has not been complied with, then somebody may have to pay a price for that," Justice TS Thakur said on the concluding day of an international conference on 'Global Environmental Issues'.

Justice Thakur's remarks came in response to power and coal minister Piyush Goyal's statement blaming "judicial overreach" for stunting growth.

Emphasizing that the government has to ensure adequate job opportunities and also ensure that economic development is not at the cost of environment degradation, Goyal said, "It is very important to understand that sometimes, judicial overreach or sensationalization of a particular subject can cause more damage than growth."

Goyal, however, said he believed in pragmatic judicial review as it was necessary to see whether the government's actions were adequate to save the environment.

Picking up on Goyal's reference, Justice Thakur, who addressed the gathering after the minister's speech, reminded him of the government's poor record in cleaning the Ganga, implementing afforestation programmes and preventing encroachments on floodplains in Jammu and Kashmir that led to last year's flooding of Srinagar.

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