The SC bench of justices Madan B.Lokur and Prafulla C Pant, on 10th February, directed the Centre to apprise the Wetlands (Conservation and Management) Rules, 2016 on or before 30th June of this year. “There has to be some conclusiveness to the publishing of the Rules, as the matter has been pending with the Centre for long”, the bench noticed.
A wetland is land covered by water. Wetlands include marshes, ponds, the edge of lakes, oceans, delta at the mouth of a river, and low-lying areas that often flood. Wetlands play a significant role to maintain ecological balance.
Importantly wetlands across the world are known as Ramsar sites. Ramsar is a city in Iran, where in 1971, an international Convention for the preservation and sustainable use of wetlands, was signed on 2nd February ,which is noticed as the World Wetland Day. It was originally contracted by seven countries when it came into force on 21th December 1975. The number of contracting parties rose to 169, the number of specified sites in the world to 2000 in the year 2015. India sanctioned the Convention on 1st February 1982, and there are 26 Ramsar sites in the country, with 689, 131 hectares. On 10th February, the SC bench directed the Centre to give specific details about the steps taken to preserve these 26 sites.
The bench also noticed that there is no justification why the Centre should not have taken inspiring action and constituted the committee for the purpose of finalizing the rules much earlier.
The Draft Rules were made available to the public for tempting objections/suggestions in March 2016. As many as 175 comments were received. The Centre constituted a committee to see these comments, but gave it only 45 days to report.
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