Authorities Constituted Under Section 3(3)

In one line

Almost every environmental authority a student will meet in this paper was created by a single sub-section, and a court had to force the Government to use it.

In the wording a student can write in an examination: section 3(3) of the Environment (Protection) Act 1986 empowers the Central Government, if it considers it necessary or expedient for the purposes of the Act, by order published in the Official Gazette, to constitute an authority or authorities for the purpose of exercising and performing such of its powers and functions under the Act and for taking measures with respect to such of the matters in section 3(2) as may be mentioned in the order, subject to its supervision and control, and to empower such an authority to issue directions under section 5.

Why the provision was necessary

The Act gave the Central Government a very wide power and gave it to a Ministry in Delhi. The environment is administered locally. Without a mechanism for creating bodies to exercise the power on the ground, the Act would have been unusable.

The Water Act and the Air Act had solved the same problem by creating Boards in the statute itself. This Act does it differently: it creates nothing and empowers the Government to create anything.

What has been created under it

Coastal Zone Management Authorities. A National Coastal Zone Management Authority and a State or Union territory Authority for each coastal State, constituted under section 3(3) and reconstituted periodically. They are the enforcement machinery of the coastal notification, and paragraph 9 of the notification of 2019 refers to them.

State Environment Impact Assessment Authorities and State Expert Appraisal Committees. Constituted under section 3(3) for each State. They grant environmental clearance for Category B projects under the notification of 2006, and paragraph 3 of that notification says that they shall be constituted by the Central Government under sub-section (3) of section 3 of the Act.

Authorities directed by the courts. The Loss of Ecology (Prevention and Payment of Compensation) Authority for Tamil Nadu, constituted after Vellore Citizens Welfare Forum v. Union of India, and the Aquaculture Authority constituted after S. Jagannath v. Union of India, which was later replaced by a statutory body under the Coastal Aquaculture Authority Act 2005.

Subject-specific authorities. Bodies for the Dahanu Taluka environmentally fragile area, for particular eco-sensitive zones, and for the management of particular problems.

The two decisions that made the sub-section work

Facts. In Vellore Citizens Welfare Forum v. Union of India, AIR 1996 SC 2715, tanneries in five districts of Tamil Nadu discharged untreated effluent onto agricultural land and into the Palar river.

Held. The Court held the precautionary and polluter pays principles to be part of Indian environmental law and directed the Central Government to constitute an authority under section 3(3) of the Act, conferring on it all the powers necessary to deal with the situation, and in particular to implement the precautionary principle and the polluter pays principle, to assess the loss to the ecology or the environment in the affected areas, to identify the individuals and families who had suffered, and to determine the compensation to be recovered from the polluters.