{"id":37174,"date":"2023-09-08T03:44:00","date_gmt":"2023-09-07T22:14:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/vajiramandravi.com\/current-affairs\/?p=37174"},"modified":"2025-04-22T11:41:49","modified_gmt":"2025-04-22T06:11:49","slug":"cec","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/vajiramandravi.com\/current-affairs\/cec\/","title":{"rendered":"Central Empowered Committee: SC hands over its green watchdog committee to Environment Ministry"},"content":{"rendered":"<h3><strong>What\u2019s in Today\u2019s Article?<\/strong><\/h3>\n<ul>\n<li><strong>Why in News?<\/strong><\/li>\n<li><strong>About the Central Empowered Committee (CEC)<\/strong><\/li>\n<li><strong>Mandate of the CEC<\/strong><\/li>\n<li><strong>Events that led to the Handing over of CEC<\/strong><\/li>\n<li><strong>Highlights of the Notification Regarding new set-up of CEC<\/strong><\/li>\n<li><strong>Concerns about the new set-up of CEC<\/strong><\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<h2><strong>Why in News?<\/strong><\/h2>\n<ul>\n<li>The Central Empowered Committee (CEC) will now report to the Environment Ministry which will nominate its members and have the final say on the merit of its recommendations.<\/li>\n<li>The SC hands over its <strong>green watchdog committee<\/strong>(set up two decades ago) to the Environment Ministry.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<h2><strong>About the Central Empowered Committee (CEC):<\/strong><\/h2>\n<ul>\n<li>The CEC was set up in <strong>2002 (<\/strong>and reconstituted in 2008) by the SC to flag cases of official non-compliance with its orders related to conservation.<\/li>\n<li>The current CEC is chaired by retired IAS officer (PV Jayakrishnan) and includes retired Forest service officers and a lawyer and naturalist.<\/li>\n<li><strong>Until now, the CEC reported directly to the SC and often evaluated the Environment Ministry\u2019s decisions.<\/strong><\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<h2><strong>Mandate of the CEC:<\/strong><\/h2>\n<ul>\n<li>The CEC has rendered <strong>outstanding services to the cause of environment<\/strong>.<\/li>\n<li><strong>It has filed thousands of reports<\/strong> on issues referred to it by the apex court that have shaped the discourse around environment policy.\n<ul>\n<li>These include<strong> compensatory afforestation<\/strong>, net present value of forests, Kudremukh mining, Aravali forests and Bellary mining.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<\/li>\n<li>In 2006, a CEC report resulted in a month\u2019s simple imprisonment of a former Maharashtra minister and serving Forest Secretary for permitting wood mills to operate in violation of the SC\u2019s order.<\/li>\n<li>In (May) 2023, the CEC\u2019s recommendation to cancel the double-tracking of a railway line from Castle Rock in Karnataka to Kulem in Goa was accepted by the SC.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<h2><strong>Events that led to the Handing over of CEC:<\/strong><\/h2>\n<ul>\n<li>In (March) 2023, the CEC filed a report against reconstructing a convention centre at Patnitop in J&amp;K after the SC had allowed it.<\/li>\n<li><strong>The SC did not consider it \u201cappropriate\u201d<\/strong> and observed that the CEC could not question the SC.<\/li>\n<li>The Bench asked for a few \u201cyoung\u201d names from the government to replace some of the ageing members of the CEC.<\/li>\n<li>In (May) 2023, Solicitor General said that the government would publish a draft notification under the provisions of <strong>the Environment (Protection) Act 1986<\/strong> to make CEC <strong>a permanent statutory body<\/strong>, after placing the draft before the SC.<\/li>\n<li>In (August) 2023, <strong>the SC permitted the ministry<\/strong> to proceed further with the constitution of the CEC as a permanent body <strong>would be in the interest of all the stakeholders<\/strong>.<\/li>\n<li>On September 5, the ministry issued the notification.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<h2><strong>Highlights of the Notification Regarding new set-up of CEC:<\/strong><\/h2>\n<ul>\n<li>The notification makes it clear that the Committee shall function<strong> under the administrative control of the Central Government <\/strong>in the Ministry of Environment.<\/li>\n<li><strong>It diluted the CEC\u2019s autonomy on four key counts:<\/strong>\n<ul>\n<li>The committee will report to the ministry, instead of the SC;<\/li>\n<li>The ministry will pick all the members and the SC will have no role in the process;<\/li>\n<li>The ministry, and not the court, will fund the committee;<\/li>\n<li>The provision of having two NGOs in the committee has been done away with. Now anyone considered an \u201cexpert\u201d can be included as a member.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<\/li>\n<li>In case any suggestion or recommendation of the CEC is not acceptable to the State or Central Government,<strong> the Government shall give reasons in writing<\/strong> for not accepting the same.\n<ul>\n<li><strong>Such a decision of the Central Government shall be final<\/strong>.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<h2><strong>Concerns about the new set-up of CEC:<\/strong><\/h2>\n<ul>\n<li><strong>The ministry will have total control over the committee: <\/strong>The new CEC will be accountable to the ministry and hence cannot evaluate its decisions.<\/li>\n<li><strong>Role and influence of the SC has been further reduced:<\/strong> For example, the recent amendments to the Forest Conservation Act completely undermined the SC\u2019s landmark judgement in the Godavarman case.\n<ul>\n<li>Therefore, the Forest Bench of the SC will no longer be flooded with appeals.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<hr \/>\n<h3><strong>Q1) What is compensatory afforestation?<\/strong><\/h3>\n<p>Compensatory Afforestation is the process of afforestation and associated regeneration activities, which are done to compensate for destroyed forest land that has been diverted to non-forest activities.<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<h3><strong>Q2) What is Article 51A(g) of the Indian Constitution?<\/strong><\/h3>\n<p>It is the fundamental duty of every citizen of India under Article 51A(g) of the Constitution to protect and improve the natural environment including forests, lakes, rivers and wildlife.<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<hr \/>\n<p><strong>Source: <\/strong><a href=\"https:\/\/indianexpress.com\/article\/india\/central-empowered-committee-sc-hands-over-its-green-watchdog-committee-to-environment-ministry-8929659\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\"><u>Central Empowered Committee: SC hands over its green watchdog committee to Environment Ministry<\/u><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>The Central Empowered Committee was set up in 2002 by the SC to flag cases of official non-compliance with its orders related to conservation<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":5,"featured_media":37175,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[18],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-37174","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-upsc-mains-current-affairs","8":"no-featured-image-padding"},"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/vajiramandravi.com\/current-affairs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/37174","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/vajiramandravi.com\/current-affairs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/vajiramandravi.com\/current-affairs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/vajiramandravi.com\/current-affairs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/5"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/vajiramandravi.com\/current-affairs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=37174"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/vajiramandravi.com\/current-affairs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/37174\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/vajiramandravi.com\/current-affairs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/37175"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/vajiramandravi.com\/current-affairs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=37174"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/vajiramandravi.com\/current-affairs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=37174"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/vajiramandravi.com\/current-affairs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=37174"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}