Jairam Ramesh hails Supreme Court's forest definition order on ‘illegal, disastrous Narendra Modi government schemes'

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Modi government schemes. “After the electoral bonds scam, the Supreme Court has stopped another set of blatantly illegal and disastrous Modi government schemes." Jairam wrote on micro-blogging site X. Jairam Ramesh, who was also the former environment minister, also tagged a media report on the Supreme Court directing that the dictionary meaning of "forest" be applied.

“The Prime Minister wanted to make it easier to hand over India’s forests and pollute the environment, to benefit his corporate crony friends. So first, he changed the rules in 2017 so that projects that had violated their forest clearance could be legalized." Jairam Ramesh added to his post. Congress leader Jairam Ramesh shared another media report on the amnesty window opened for just six months in March 2017 to clear projects in a novel "violation category" that became routine through a Union Environment Ministry notification in July 2021, and provided ex-post facto approval to over 100 projects till the Supreme Court stayed the notification in January this year.

More than 100 projects of big corporates, including coal mines, factories and cement plants, were allowed to brazenly start work in violation of environmental clearances, Ramesh claimed. “Next, in 2023, the Modi government brought the Forest Conservation Amendment, which stripped protections from 2 lakh square km of forest. This was in complete violation of a 1996 Supreme Court judgement.