On Thursday, the Apex Court stayed contempt proceedings against the Centre for alleged "willful disobedience" of a judicial order to ensure that the draft Environment Impact Assessment (EIA) notification of 2020 is published in all the 22 languages in the Eighth Schedule of the Constitution within ten days from June 30.

A bench comprising CJI S A Bobde, Justices A S Bopanna & V Ramasubramanian passed the order after Solicitor General Tushar Mehta withdrew the appeal to seek a remedy before the High Court of Delhi.

"Accordingly, the special leave petition is dismissed as withdrawn with the aforesaid liberty. Needless to state that in case the petitioner fails before the HC, it is permitted to approach this Court once again challenging the main order as well as the order passed in the review petition.

The Bench said that "The contempt petition shall remain stayed till the disposal of the review petition".

On Tuesday, the High Court of Delhi had asked the Centre to reply to a plea seeking contempt action against it for alleged "wilful disobedience" of the judicial order on the notification.

It had issued the notice to the Environment Ministry, which was directed by the high court on June 30 to ensure the draft EIA 2020 is published in all 22 Indian languages within 10 days, & sought its response to the contempt plea by Aug 17.

The order came on the plea by environmental conservationist Vikrant Tongad who has alleged "wilful disobedience & deliberate defiance" by the ministry as it neither published the translated versions of the draft EIA nor did it seek more time from the court to do so.

The draft EIA 2020, according to the plea, provides for post-facto approval of projects & does away with public consultation in some cases.

A division bench of the high court said in the June 30 order that looking at the far reaching consequences of the public consultation process for which the draft notification has been published, "we are of the view that it would be in aid of effective dissemination of the proposed notification if arrangements are made for its translation into other languages as well, at least those mentioned in the Eighth Schedule to the Constitution".

The translation may be undertaken by the Centre itself or with the assistance of the state governments, where applicable, it said.

The Court had said, "Such translations should also be published through the website of the Ministry of Environment, Forest & Climate Change, Government of India as well as on websites of environment ministries of all states as well as those of state pollution control boards, within 10 days from today".

The publishing of the translated versions within ten days "would further enable the public to respond to the draft within the period stipulated in this judgment", it had said.

The order had come on Tongad's plea seeking extension of the time to respond to the draft EIA 2020 till Sept or till the Coronavirus pandemic subsists.

The plea had alleged that the draft EIA 2020 completely supersedes & replaces the existing environmental norms.

It had said, "This draft notification proposes significant changes to the existing regime, including removing public consultation entirely in certain instances, reducing the time for public consultation from 45 days to 40 days, & allowing post facto approvals for projects".

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