Supreme Court upholds centre’s power to notify post-facto clearance
The Supreme Court has struck down the central government's 2021 Office Memorandum (OM) that created a mechanism for granting post facto environmental clearances to projects that violated prior clearance norms. However, the…
The Story in Brief
The Supreme Court has struck down the central government's 2021 Office Memorandum (OM) that created a mechanism for granting post facto environmental clearances to projects that violated prior clearance norms. However, the three-judge bench ruled that the government can frame statutory amnesty schemes under Section 3 of the Environment (Protection) Act, 1986, for specified categories of such violations.
Mongabay India reports that the court quashed the 2021 OM as violating Articles 14 and 21 of the Constitution, but the ruling applies only prospectively. Environmental experts say this leaves open a statutory route for future regularisation of projects that bypassed prior clearance, departing from earlier Supreme Court judgments that treated post facto clearances as incompatible with environmental law.
The Indian Opinion
Environmental groups call this a dilution of law, but the court did strike down the 2021 OM and said future schemes must be statutory, not executive orders. The real test is whether the government issues a notification under Section 3, and whether it imposes genuine penalties or simply rubber-stamps violators. Watch for the fine print: will the amnesty apply to large projects in fragile zones, or only minor infractions?
Source: india.mongabay.com
This story was synthesised by AI from the source linked above.
