Lakshmikumaran & Sridharan is organising a conference call on “Biodiversity Act - Prior approval for past acts” on 15.11.2018 from 4:00pm – 5:00pm.
Ministry of Environment, Forest and Climate Change has on 10-9-2018 brought out an office memorandum (OM) whereby the National Biodiversity Authority has been directed to hear all such cases where prior approvals under the Bio-Diversity Act was required, but the person/entity has not obtained the same. The Authority has been directed to pass appropriate orders with respect to acts that may have occurred in past.
This provides an opportunity to all the entities/persons to get absolved of the violations that might have been committed in obtaining the biological resources occurring in India due to non-compliances of the provision under the BDA.
In addition, this will also prevent objections from being raised by NBA for future approvals, which may be a consequence of any past activity under the BDA. It may however be noted that for implementing these directions, the Ministry has provided a specified time period of 100 days from the date of issuance of the OM.
Mr. R Parthasarathy, Principal Partner, Lakshmikumaran & Sridharan will enlighten entities or persons on provisions of Sections 3, 4 and 6 of the BDA and various other compliances and exemptions.