The National Environmental Appellate Authority is the only competent authority, set up by an Act, to hear appeals from aggrieved/affected persons against the grant of environmental clearances by the Ministry of Environment and Forests to different projects across the country.

However, the appellate authority is a body under the Ministry of Environment and Forests itself and is headed by a former Director General of Forests.

The authority delivered its judgment on December 19 after hearing the case for about a year. The order was passed by a bench comprising of J C Kala, Dr I V Manivannan and Kaushlendra Prasad. According to Ritwick Dutta, Counsel for Academy for Mountain Environics and coordinator of Legal Initiative for Forest and Environment (LIFE), “ this is the first instance in the ten years of working of the NEAA that an environmental clearance granted by the Ministry of Environment and Forests has been quashed, and therefore, is truly a historic decision.”

The Andhra Pradesh, meanwhile, will have to either negotiate with the two states or will have to change the design of the project — in both cases, the project is slated to be delayed indefinitely.