WRIT REMEDY AND THE NATIONAL GREEN TRIBUNAL - PIL

​WEEK 4-6: WRIT REMEDY AND THE NATIONAL GREEN TRIBUNAL

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ENVIRONMENTAL LAW

PUBLIC INTEREST LITIGATION

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Key Highlights of the Report:

• Encroachment:

• Air Pollution

• Environmental Crimes:

• Extreme Weather Events

• Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs)

• Plastic Waste

• Agriculture

State of India’s Environment Report 2023

(Anton Chekov, 1896)

The forests grow ever fewer; the rivers parch; the wild life is gone; the climate is ruined; and with every passing day the earth becomes uglier and poorer.

JUDICIAL ACTIVISM AND PUBLIC INTEREST LITIGATION

• Linked to the evolution of environmental rights in India.

• Laid the groundwork for the growth of public interest litigation in a series of cases bristling with procedural innovation and doctrinal creativity.

• Liberalization of locus standi and the recognition of citizen and representative standing created a new form of legal action.

• Arrival of a new constitutional locus of power

• In some public interest environmental cases, the Court has passed over 200 orders in two decades.

GREENING THE CONSTITUTIONAL RIGHT TO LIFE

• The Court's jurisdiction in public interest cases is derived from Article 32 of the Constitution of India.

• For public interest litigation to be truly effective, the breadth of substantive rights protected under the Constitution would also need to be comprehensive.

• The Court's recognition of an environmental right as part of the fundamental right to life opened the floodgates for public interest environmental cases.

1992 Rio Declaration on Environment and Development recognizes:

That standards in some countries "may be inappropriate and of unwarranted economic and social cost" in developing countries.

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The Court has held these principles to be '"essential features of sustainable development", "imperative for preserving ecology" and "part of the environmental law of India'."

The Court, therefore, requires these principles to be "applied in full force for protecting the natural resources of this country".

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PRINCIPLES OF INTERNATIONAL ENVIRONMENTAL LAW

-M. Gallanter and J. Krishnan

“India has pulled off the astonishing feat of sustaining a regime of constitutional liberty with vigorous judicial protection of human rights in a very large, very poor, and very diverse society ... for all its flaws and imperfections this is surely one of the epic legal accomplishments of this century”

IMPLICATIONS OF INDIAN SUPREME COURT’S INNOVATIONS FOR ENVIRONMENTAL JURISPRUDENCE

COURT'S DIRECTIONS ON ENVIRONMENTAL ISSUES

• Involved in general questions of law, but also in the technical details of many environmental cases.

• Some critics of the Supreme Court described the Court as the ‘Lords of Green Bench’ or ‘Garbage Supervisor’

• Judicial innovations have become part of the larger Indian jurisprudence ever since the Court started intervening in the affairs of an executive in the post-emergency period
  

Multiple Choice

The innovative methods initiated in resolving environmental litigation,

however, have been almost entirely dominated the

environmental jurisprudence process for more than

the last twenty years.

• False

• True

Multiple Select

The most important procedural innovation for

environmental jurisprudence has been:

• The relaxation of traditional process of standing in the Court

• Introducing the concept of Public Interest Litigation (PIL)

Public Interest Litigation

1. M.C. Mehta v. Union of India (Kanpur Tanneries Case)

2. Sachidanand Pandey v State of West Bengal, AIR 1987 SC 1109

3. Rural Litigation and Entitlement Kendra v State of UP, (Dehradun Lime Stone Quarrying case)

4. M/s Abhilash Textiles v Rajkot Municipal Corporation, AIR 1988 Guj. 57

5.. Subhash Kumar v State of Bihar, AIR 1991 SC 420

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