A Decade of National Green Tribunal of India: Judgement Analysis and Observations

Established in 2010, it has been more than a decade since the establishment of the National Green Tribunal in India and in this context, the effectiveness of the National Green Tribunal as an institution comes to the forefront specifically from the lens of access to justice. To fill in the gap that is existing in the environmental area in the social and economic dimension role of an effective institution created for environment protection is a matter of utmost relevance. The judicial mechanism as a means of access to justice in environmental matters as one of the pillars of environmental governance is seen as means for achieving environmental justice and bringing in environmental democracy. National Green Tribunal is a quasi-judicial body dealing specifically with environment-related civil litigations, which brings about the plurality of justice with its multidisciplinary approach. This paper through the analysis of judgments of the year 2019 of the specific months where the tribunal has done significant intervention, through analysis looks into the impact the judgments have concerning environmental protection and innovations brought and jurisprudence created through its judgments and impact on the access to environmental justice.