New Delhi: The National Green Tribunal (NGT), set up to handle cases involving impacts on the environment due to human activity, has had a clearance rate of 0% for public-interest or environmental justice cases heard on merits from January to June this year, according to a recent report. Meanwhile, the project proponent sides (industries and others) had a success rate of nearly 60%.Commenting on the report by the South Asian Reporter on Environmental Law (SAREL), former Union environment minister and senior Congress leader Jairam Ramesh said that the Narendra Modi government had “emasculated” the Tribunal over the last ten years.Environment wins nothingSAREL, a database of environmental laws and judgments from courts and tribunals in South Asia including India, Nepal, Bangladesh, Pakistan, Bhutan, and Sri Lanka, analysed all cases heard by the NGT between January and June this year. This included cases across all benches: principal, southern, western, central and eastern. Of all the 119 appeals across these five benches, the environmental justice or public-interest side won 0 of 16 merit appeals. The project-proponent, industry and property-owner side won 30 of 51.“That is a 0% public-interest (Environmental Justice) success rate against 58.8% for project proponents/owners/industry – the proponent side won on the merits while the environmental side won nothing at all. All five of the benches gave the environmental side a complete shut-out,” the report said.According to the report, the data showed that who the filing side is, predicts the outcome of the case more clearly than any single bench does. For instance, an industry appellant won well over half its appeals, while the public interest side won none of its sixteen.Nearly half of these cases were dismissed on technical grounds (limitation, jurisdiction, maintainability or withdrawal without any merits ruling), so this is “a major filter”, per the report. “Third, the environmental shut-out is total: no bench has given a favourable judgment to a single environmental/public-interest appeal on the merits in the entire six-month window,” the report noted.Source: “Who Wins At The Green Tribunal?”. SAREL, 2026.‘Modi govt has emasculated NGT’That 52 of the 119 appeals filed before the NGT’s five benches were dismissed on procedural grounds is in itself “questionable”, commented former Union environment minister and Congress general secretary in-charge of communications Ramesh.“The contrast is particularly significant given that the NGT was established in June 2010 through an Act of Parliament to provide effective and expeditious environmental justice to the citizens of the country. Over the past decade it has been emasculated by the Modi Govt but recover and rediscover its courage it must,” said Ramesh, who is also a Rajya Sabha MP.For instance, the NGT refused to interfere with the environmental clearance given to the infrastructure projects on Great Nicobar island in the Andaman and Nicobar in February this year, despite conservationists pointing out several issues including the fact that the project is to be located in a Coastal Regulation Zone (CRZ)-I area where no developmental activities are permitted.