7-Jul-2017: SC stays HC verdict on Ganga status
The Supreme Court froze the status of “legal persons” accorded to rivers Ganga and Yamuna by the Uttarakhand High Court in March 2017.
A Bench of Chief Justice of India J.S. Khehar and D.Y. Chandrachud stayed the High Court verdict which held that the rights of the two major rivers “shall be equivalent to the rights of human beings and the injury/harm caused to these bodies shall be treated as harm/injury caused to the human beings.”
The High Court had invoked its jurisdiction as the parens patriae of the rivers while declaring the “glaciers including Gangotri and Yamunotri, rivers, streams, rivulets, lakes, air, meadows, dales, jungles, forests wetlands, grasslands, springs and waterfalls, legal entity/ legal person/juristic person/juridical person/ moral person/artificial person having the status of a legal person, with all corresponding rights, duties and liabilities of a living person, in order to preserve and conserve them.”
The stay came on a petition filed by Haridwar resident Mohammad Salim over mining and stone crushing along the banks of the Ganga.
The High Court had ordered the Director, Namami Gange project, for cleaning and rejuvenating the river, the Chief Secretary and the Advocate General of Uttarakhand to act as “legal parents” of the holy rivers and work as a human face to protect, conserve and preserve them and their tributaries.
These officers, the High Court had directed, would be bound to “uphold the status” of the two rivers and also promote their “health and well-being.” It had also directed the government to form a Ganga Management Board as per a December 2016 order.
Source: The Hindu
21-Mar-2017: Ganga & Yamuna termed ‘living persons’
In a first in the country, the Uttarakhand High Court declared that the rivers Ganga and Yamuna are “living persons.”
On March 15, New Zealand river Whanganui became the first in the world to be granted a legal human status.
Court order read that in order "to protect the recognition and the faith of society, rivers Ganga and Yamuna are required to be declared as legal persons [or] living persons”. Ganga and Yamuna, all their tributaries, streams… are declared as juristic or legal persons or living entities having the status of a legal person with all corresponding rights, duties and liabilities of a living person in order to preserve and conserve river Ganga and Yamuna.
The court ordered that the Director of the Namami Gange programme, the Uttarakhand Chief Secretary, and the Advocate-General of Uttarakhand would serve as “parents” for the rivers and would be the human faces to “protect, conserve and preserve” the rivers and their tributaries.