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Indian lawyer wins

green award

SAN FRANCISCO: A U.S. foundation awarded prizes on Earth Day Monday to six environmentalists from around the world, including an Indian lawyer who has battled to reduce pollution and a Ugandan reporter who exposed animal smuggling.

The Goldman Environmental Foundation, formed in 1989 by San Francisco philanthropists Richard and Rhoda Goldman, awards annual prizes of $75,000 each to grassroots environmentalists from six regions of the world.

This year's winner for Asia was public interest attorney M.C. Mehta, 49, of New Delhi, India. The foundation said Mehta had single-handedly won about 40 landmark environmental judgments from India's Supreme Court since 1984, making him perhaps the world's most successful environmental litigator.

Among his successes have been the reduction of industrial pollution that has fouled the sacred Ganges River and eroded the marble of the famed Taj Mahal as well as the introduction of lead-free gasoline to India, the foundation said.-Reuter