Discuss the role of the National Green Tribunal in strengthening environmental jurisprudence in India. How can digital initiatives like mobile applications improve access to environmental justice?

Established on 18 October 2010 under the National Green Tribunal Act, 2010, the NGT was created for the effective and expeditious disposal of cases relating to environmental protection and conservation of forests and other natural resources [2]. Its record shows a specialised forum that has deepened environmental jurisprudence, even as structural gaps limit how far that gain reaches ordinary litigants.

Role in strengthening environmental jurisprudence

• Specialised adjudication: a statutory tribunal outside the ordinary civil court hierarchy, combining judicial members with expert members holding technical environmental qualifications [2].
• Enforcement of environmental rights: the Act expressly covers enforcement of legal rights relating to the environment, giving statutory shape to doctrines like polluter pays and precautionary principle.
• Procedural innovation: between July 2018 and July 2023 the Tribunal adopted video conferencing and other steps to simplify procedure and make itself people-friendly [2].
• Institutional dialogue: periodic national and international conferences — including the International Conference on 'The Future of Environment and Climate Dynamics' — link judicial practice to climate policy [1].

Digital initiatives and access to justice

• The NGT Mobile Application, released alongside that conference, lets litigants track case numbers, dates and orders without repeated visits to the registry [1].
• For villagers, small fishers and local groups, information is itself a cost; a phone-based cause list removes it and builds on the video-conferencing precedent [1][2].
• Limits must be acknowledged: the NGT sits only at a Principal Bench in New Delhi and zonal benches at Kolkata, Bhopal, Chennai and Pune [4]; an app cannot create a nearer bench or fund a lawyer. Benefits also presuppose smartphone access and literacy.
• Deeper constraints are institutional — the Supreme Court in the Madras Bar Association rulings found tribunals insufficiently independent of the executive and urged a National Tribunals Commission, still not created, while vacancies have rendered several tribunals dysfunctional [3].

Digitisation therefore lowers the cost of following a case, not of winning timely relief. Pairing the app with filled vacancies, more regional benches and the recommended National Tribunals Commission would convert transparency into genuine environmental justice, advancing the Article 21 right to a healthy environment and SDG-16.