"Supreme Court's Environmental Jurisprudence: Legacy, Principles, and Emerging Tensions"
Absolute Liability
enterprise liability for harm from inherently dangerous activity, with no exceptions unlike strict liability
Precautionary Principle
State must anticipate, prevent, and attack causes of environmental degradation before harm occurs
India's constitutional framework for environmental protection was sparse at the time of independence — the word 'environment' did not appear in the original text of the Constitution. The turning point came with India's participation in the UN Conference on Human Environment at Stockholm, whose commitments were translated into domestic constitutional law through the Constitution (Forty-Second Amendment) Act, 1976. This amendment inserted Article 48A as a Directive Principle of State Policy, directing the State to protect and improve the environment and safeguard forests and wildlife, and Article 51A(g) as a Fundamental Duty, obligating every citizen to protect and improve the natural environment. These provisions, though non-justiciable in isolation, have served as interpretive anchors for the judiciary in expanding the scope of Article 21 (right to life) to include the right to a clean and healthy environment.
The statutory framework developed in parallel. The Water (Prevention and Control of Pollution) Act, 1974 and the Environment (Protection) Act, 1986 provided regulatory machinery, while the National Green Tribunal Act, 2010 later created a specialised adjudicatory body. Yet it was the judiciary — through Public Interest Litigation and expansive constitutional interpretation — that gave Indian environmental law its substantive content and moral force, long before legislative frameworks caught up.
The Supreme Court's contribution to environmental jurisprudence rests on four foundational doctrines, each developed through landmark cases. First, the doctrine of absolute liability, evolved in Union Carbide Corporation vs Union of India following the Bhopal gas tragedy, holds that an enterprise engaged in inherently dangerous activity is absolutely liable for any harm caused — with no exceptions available under the older Rylands v Fletcher rule of strict liability. This was a deliberate judicial innovation to address the inadequacy of common law for industrial disasters.
Second, the polluter pays principle — introduced internationally at the Rio Summit and first applied in India in Indian Council for Enviro-Legal Action vs Union of India — requires that the party responsible for environmental damage bears the cost of remediation. Third, the precautionary principle, elaborated in Vellore Citizens' Welfare Forum vs Union of India, imposes a three-part obligation on the State: to anticipate, prevent, and attack the causes of environmental degradation. …
With reference to the Constitution of India, prohibitions or limitations or provisions contained in ordinary laws cannot act as prohibitions or limitations on the constitutional powers under Article 142. It could mean which one of the following?
In India, Judicial Review implies
Which one of the following has been constituted under the Environment (Protection) Act, 1986?
Consider the following statements regarding India's constitutional provisions on environment:
1.Article 48A, inserted by the 42nd Constitutional Amendment, is a Fundamental Duty of citizens.
2.Article 51A(g) obliges the State to protect and improve the environment.
3.The word 'environment' was not expressly mentioned in the original Constitution of India.
Which of the statements given above is/are correct?
With reference to the doctrine of absolute liability as developed by the Supreme Court of India, which of the following statements is correct?
Consider the following pairs of environmental law principles and the cases in which they were first applied or elaborated in India:
1.Polluter Pays Principle — Indian Council for Enviro-Legal Action vs Union of India
2.Public Trust Doctrine — Vellore Citizens' Welfare Forum vs Union of India
3.Precautionary Principle — M.C. Mehta vs Kamal Nath
How many of the above pairs are correctly matched?
The principle of 'inter-generational equity' in environmental law, as articulated by the Supreme Court of India, means:
ASSERTION (A): The precautionary principle must be ranked above the polluter pays principle in the hierarchy of environmental law doctrines.
REASON (R): The polluter pays principle is a principle of reparation that operates after environmental harm has occurred, whereas the precautionary principle is preventive in nature.
Which one of the following is correct in respect of the above?
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