Context

• From the Aravalli ranges to coastal mangroves, India stands at a profound moral and constitutional crossroads.
• Amitav Ghosh’s The Hungry Tide offers a powerful metaphor for the present moment: nature remembers what law and power attempt to erase.
• Environmental safeguards are increasingly diluted in the name of development, raising concerns that the Constitution may become a silent witness to ecological loss.
• Such damage is neither abstract nor distant; its consequences, like the tide, return with relentless force.

Policy Shifts and Judicial Retreat in Environmental Protection

• Recent regulatory changes reflect a weakening of environmental safeguards.
• On December 18, 2025, non-coal mining projects were permitted to undertake Environmental Impact Assessments (EIA) without specifying land location or area, reversing the principle of prior scrutiny.
• This was compounded by the Supreme Court’s recall of Vanashakti vs Union of India (2025), which had prohibited retrospective environmental clearances.
• Although a suo motu stay by Chief Justice Surya Kant temporarily restored institutional credibility, the broader trend reveals increasing judicial leniency, treating environmental law as a procedural formality rather than a substantive safeguard.

The Aravalli Controversy: Redefining Ecology Through Reductionism

• The Aravalli ranges illustrate this shift most starkly. As the ecological backbone of north-western India, they prevent desertification, recharge groundwater, stabilise soil, and sustain biodiversity.
• Earlier rulings, notably M.C. Mehta vs Union of India (2004) and subsequent orders up to 2010, recognised irreversible damage caused by unregulated mining and rejected narrow, height-based definitions.
• However, issue relating to Definition of Aravalli Hills and Ranges (2025) accepted a 100-metre elevation criterion, ignoring hydrology, ecological continuity, and geomorphology.
• This reductionist approach departs from the precautionary principle articulated in Vellore Citizens’ Welfare Forum vs Union of India (1996) and effectively removes protection from vast ecologically significant areas.

Constitutional Implications: Articles 21, 48A, 14, and Environmental Rights

• These developments have serious constitutional
• The right to a clean and healthy environment has been read into Article 21, while Article 48A obligates the state to protect and improve the environment, and Article 51A(g) places a corresponding duty on citizens.
• Judicial interpretations that enable ecological exclusion hollow out these provisions.
• Moreover, selective protection based solely on altitude creates an arbitrary classification with no rational nexus to ecological goals, violating the equality principle under Article 14.
• Such arbitrariness undermines both environmental justice and constitutional coherence.

Judicial Leniency and the Erosion of Environmental Deterrence

• The dilution of protection extends beyond the Aravallis. Courts and regulatory bodies increasingly approve projects based on assurances of mitigation rather than strict enforcement.
• Despite Common Cause vs Union of India (2017) clearly rejecting the legalisation of environmental violations after the fact, post-facto and conditional clearances have become routine.
• This erosion weakens the deterrent function of environmental law and signals that compliance is negotiable.

Mangroves, Coastal Ecology, and the Illusion of Compensation

• The consequences are especially visible in coastal ecosystems. Mangroves function as flood buffers, carbon sinks, and biodiversity reservoirs.
• Judicial approvals allowing the felling or transplantation of tens of thousands of mangrove trees for infrastructure represent a serious ecological setback.
• Reliance on compensatory afforestation ignores ecological science: mature mangrove ecosystems take decades to develop and cannot be recreated elsewhere.

Infrastructure in Fragile Ecosystems: The Char Dham Project

• A similar pattern emerges in the Himalayan region through the Char Dham highway project.
• A 2025 study identified 811 landslide-prone zones along the route, underscoring the fragility of the Himalayan ecosystem.
• Although ecological importance was acknowledged in Citizens for Green Doon vs Union of India (2021), wider roads were permitted on strategic grounds.
• Subsequent floods and disturbances raise serious questions about this balancing exercise, especially regarding intergenerational responsibility.

Procedural Inequality and Corporate Advantage

• Environmental governance increasingly favours economically powerful actors.
• Large corporations navigate clearance processes with ease, while public objections are marginalised and hearings curtailed.
• Environmental compliance becomes a checklist, undermining procedural fairness and public trust. This imbalance violates equality guarantees and entrenches perceptions of regulatory capture.

The Judiciary’s Changing Role and the Need for Institutional Reform

• Indian courts have historically been custodians of environmental rights.
• In M.C. Mehta vs Kamal Nath (1996), the Supreme Court affirmed the public trust doctrine, recognising natural resources as held by the state for the people.
• Departures from this jurisprudence necessitate reform, including regular sittings of the Supreme Court’s Green Bench and similar benches in High Courts.

Conclusion

• Ease of doing business must not become ease of environmental destruction.
• When law forgets what nature remembers, the Constitution risks standing mute before irreversible loss. Environmental harm is cyclical, cumulative, and unforgiving.
• Restoring environmental justice requires reaffirming constitutional duties, ecological science, and fairness, recognising development as a process constrained by environmental limits rather than a justification for their erosion.