SC recalls verdict rejecting green clearances
POLITY – JUDICIARY
19 NOVEMBER 2025
- A three-judge Bench of the Supreme Court, in a majority judgment, recalled its May 16, 2025 verdict declaring the Centre’s grant of ex post facto or retrospective environmental clearances (ECs) to building projects and constructions a “gross illegality” and an “anathema” — “a thing devoted to evil”.
- Chief Justice of India B.R. Gavai, who is retiring on November 23, 2025, said in his separate opinion that the May 16 judgment, if allowed to continue to operate, would have a “devastating effect” and “thousands of crores of Rupees would go to waste”.
- Justice K. Vinod Chandran backed his view, forming the majority on the Bench.
- Justice Ujjal Bhuyan recorded a sharp dissent in his 97-page opinion. He termed the review judgment an “innocent expression of opinion” which overlooked the “very fundamentals of environmental jurisprudence”.
- The separate individual opinions of the Chief Justice and Justice Bhuyan clashed, with the latter saying he was pained to see the country’s highest court “backtracking on sound environmental jurisprudence” for the sake of violators, even as the “deadly Delhi smog reminds us everyday about the hazards of pollution”.
- Justice Bhuyan was a member of the two-judge Bench, headed by the now-retired Justice A.S. Oka, which had delivered the May 16 judgment.
- ‘Crafty drafting’
- The Chief Justice reasoned that striking down retrospective ECs would lead to the demolition of multi-crore private and public projects either in use or under construction, employing hundreds.
- Chief Justice Gavai questioned the need for demolition of these structures when they could continue by paying heavy penalties.
- Many projects, including an investment by the Steel Authority of India (SAIL), a 962-bed AIIMS hospital in Odisha, a greenfield airport in Karnataka, and the Central Armed Police Forces Institute of Medical Sciences in Delhi, were pending as a result of the May 16 judgment, he wrote.
