The Supreme Court today has restrained the disbursal of the compensation amount of Rs 50 crore deposited by LG Polymers as directed by the National Green Tribunal on June 1, for a period of ten days.
The order is passed by the Bench of Justices UU Lalit, MM Shantanagoudar and Vineet Saran.
The Supreme Court also said that the Andhra Pradesh High Court shall dispose of the pending applications before it expeditiously in relation to the Vizag Gas leak case.
Learned Senior Advocate Mr. Mukul Rohatgi submitted that
- The Report of the Committee was uploaded on 28.05.2020 and the decision was rendered by the National Green Tribunal on 01.06.2020 and as such the time available for the appellant to put in its response to the Report was highly inadequate.
- Because of the multiplicity of the proceedings pending before different Fora/Courts and the fact that the record of the appellant is presently lying in sealed condition, the appellant has been completely handicapped in presenting its viewpoint and could not appropriately file its response to the Committee; and
- The appellant is taking steps to challenge the order dated 01.06.2020 passed by the National Green Tribunal and till such time, the directions so far as disbursals from the amount deposited by the appellant are concerned, be suspended.
The Bench held that, “Though there is no substantive challenge insofar as the order dated 01.06.2020 is concerned, considering the fact that the initial order is presently under challenge, we pass ad-interim direction staying the operation of the directions issued by the National Green Tribunal in para 40 of its order dated 01.06.2020 for next ten days.”
The Supreme Court has asked the High Court to hear and dispose of these pending applications expeditiously and preferably by the end of next week.
“We request the Chief Justice of the High Court to either list the matters before the Bench presided over by the Chief Justice or to assign them to any other appropriate Bench so that all the pending applications can be disposed of at an early date.”
We request the High Court to dispose of the matters as early as possible and preferably by the end of the next week.
Read Order here:
