River Was Held as a Legal Entity in Which Case

The Chamber also instructed the Advocate General to represent in all legal proceedings aimed at protecting the interests of the Ganges and the Yamuna. A chamber of the High Court of Uttarakhand declared that the Ganga and Yamuna rivers, all their tributaries, watercourses, any natural water flowing continuously or intermittently from these rivers, as legal persons/legal entities/living beings having the status of legal persons with all the corresponding rights, duties and responsibilities of a living person. “The river is now considered a living being by law, by code, so you have to face the consequences if you do something that kills the river,” Matin says. The local Māori Whanganui tribe in the North Island has been fighting for 140 years for their river – New Zealand`s third largest – to be recognised as an ancestor. This unprecedented accidental decision was inspired by the previous decision of the New Zealand government in 2012 (which came into force in 2017). A recently passed bill called Te Awa Tupua (Whanganui River Claims Settlement), passed on 15 March 2017, settled the dispute and 140-year negotiations based on the historical claims of Maori tribes to the Whanganui River. The legislation provided that two officials, one from the Whanganui iwi and a government representative, would represent the interests of the river as a legal entity. It has been observed that the well-being of the river is linked to the maintenance of people, which equates the identity of the river with that of a person. This recognition was made to improve its ability to enforce the legal protection of the environment to which it is entitled and to seek redress for the abuses it suffers at the hands of humanity.

O`Donnell E.L., Maloney M., Parker C., New developments in the legal status of rivers, August 11, 2017, law.unimelb.edu.au/__data/assets/pdf_file/0007/2516479/Legal-rights-for-rivers-Workshop-Report.pdf [Accessed 2019-11-5]. 6. The question then arises as to why can a deity who is a legal person and who can sue or be prosecuted through his pujari, shebait or any other interested person cannot prosecute as a poor person? If the Court held that a limited liability company was capable of bringing an action as a poor person, it follows, in my view, that a deity can also bring an action as a poor person. The judge of the Court of First Instance wrongly rejected the decision of the full court of that court in AIR 1959 All 540 (FB) (above), stating that it concerned a public limited company and was therefore not applicable. The court therefore wrongly rejected the Godhead`s claim for this reason. De Vries-Stotijn A., Van Ham I., Bastmeijer K., Protection through property: from private to river-held rights, “Water International” 2019, Vol. 44(6–7), DOI: doi.org/10.1080/02508060.2019.1641882. In a 2018 study co-authored with Julia Talbot-Jones, O`Donnell shows that the responsibility for enforcement rests with whoever is considered the steward of the waterway. And it can be anyone, from a court-appointed body, to the government itself – which may have chosen not to engage in environmentally friendly practices in the past – to non-governmental organizations. He noted that these officers were required to maintain the condition of the Ganges and Yamuna rivers and to promote the health and well-being of these rivers. The constitutionality of the order was immediately challenged by a firm in a federal lawsuit. The farm argued that the order makes it “vulnerable to massive liability” when fertilizing its fields “because it can never guarantee that any runoff will be prevented from entering the Lake Erie watershed.” Then, the state of Ohio joined the lawsuit, arguing that it — not the citizens of Toledo — had “legal responsibility” for environmental regulatory programs.

A panel composed of Judges Rajiv Sharma and Alok Singh said the Ganges and Yamuna rivers should be declared legal persons/living persons in order to protect society`s recognition and beliefs. Bangladesh follows a handful of countries that have adopted an idea known as the environmental personality. It was first highlighted in essays by law professor Christopher D. Stone of the University of Southern California, published in 1974 in a book entitled Should Trees Have Standing? Towards legal rights for natural objects. Stone argued that if an environmental company is given “legal personality,” it cannot be owned and has the right to appear in court. He declared the Director of NAMAMI Ganges, the Chief Secretary of the State of Uttarakhand and the Advocate General of the State of Uttarakhand as persons in loco parentis as human faces for the protection, conservation and conservation of rivers and their tributaries. Financial compensation of NZ$ 80 million is included in the settlement, as well as an additional contribution of NZ$ 1 million to the creation of the legal framework for the river. It was widely noted that the ecological status of rivers in terms of excessive water pollution and illegal construction has led to their destruction. The above-mentioned decision was triggered by the ineffective implementation of the court decision on a request to protect the banks of the Ganges and Yamuna from illegal construction in 2005.

Salim, a local resident, had filed a petition for encroachment on the banks of the Shakti Canal in Uttarakhand`s Dehradun district, asking the court to get the central government to manage water resources appropriately. “The reason we took this approach is that we consider the river an ancestor and we have always done so,” said Gerrard Albert, the chief negotiator for the Whanganui Iwi [tribe]. “Many Indigenous communities recognize nature as a subject whose personality deserves protection and respect, rather than seeing it as a commodity or commodity over which property rights should be exercised,” she says. The Chamber considered it extremely expedient to grant the Ganges and Yamuna rivers legal status as living persons/legal persons under Articles 48-A and 51A (g) of the Constitution. Albert said that all Maori tribes considered themselves part of the universe, one with and equal to mountains, rivers and seas. After 140 years of negotiations, the Maori tribe gained recognition of the Whanganui River, meaning they had to be treated as a living creature. The courts have designated the river representative authority to file all complaints concerning violations of river rights. Following the two orders, the Chief Secretary of the State of Uttarakhand, Director of the NAMAMI Ganges Project, Mr.

Praveen Kumar, Director (NMCG), Mr. Ishwar Singh, Legal Adviser, NAMAMI Gange Project, Advocate General, State of Uttarakhand, Mr. Balram K. Gupta, Director (Academic), Chandigarh Judicial Academy and Mr. M.C. Mehta, Senior Advocate, Hon. The Supreme Court was given loco parentis status as a human face to protect, preserve and preserve all glaciers including Gangotri and Yamunotri, rivers, streams, streams, streams, lakes, air, grasslands, valleys, jungle, forests, wetlands, grasslands, springs and waterfalls in the state of Uttarakhand. In addition, they aim to ensure the preservation and maintenance of legal persons against persons who exploit them for personal gain. In addition to these negative rights, they must implement schematic sanitation and water rejuvenation programmes and have the necessary funds for this purpose.

This includes protecting the universality of the free-flowing river, which can be maintained by regulating obstacles and commercial constructions such as dams and hydroelectric projects. However, the extent to which these custodians will successfully exercise their power to mitigate the depletion of natural resources seems questionable. Corporations. Those created and invented by human laws for the needs of society and government, called corporations or political organizations.