More than 600 citizens and civil society groups wrote to Chief Justice of India Surya Kant on Friday, May 22, taking exception to his remarks on May 11 criticising environmentalists for filing petitions in courts and for suggesting that they are stalling development. ‘Environmentalist’ is not a term to delegitimise efforts to protect India’s natural wealth for its citizens and the Supreme Court should withdraw the oral remarks made by Kant, it said.
On the same day, the Constitutional Conduct Group (a collective of former government officials) also wrote to the CJI expressing its “deep concern” at his “disparaging remarks”.
What the CJI said
Here are the CJI’s comments that caused these sharp responses:
“Show us even a single project in this country where these alleged environmental activists have said that we welcome this project. Country is progressing well, we welcome this project. Everything you drag to the court,” a bench comprising CJI Kant and Justice Joymalya Bagchi said on May 11.
It was hearing a petition challenging the expansion of Pipavav Port in Gujarat, which the National Green Tribunal (NGT) had cleared. The Wire has learnt that the petitioner is a member of the local community living near Pipavav Port.
“In this country, the kind of litigations that are filed only to stall all development projects, that is the whole problem,” the bench allegedly said.
The bench is also reported to have added: “You also state you went to NGT and unfortunately that creates lot of doubts on bona fides. You don’t go to any expert agency, you don’t go to any authority pointing out that look here, this is your report submitted. I am an expert, I find that these are the deficiencies in your report, if at all you are expert. You are some RTI activist, you are so-and-so activist, an environmentalist, you have so many degrees. I’m RTI activist, I’m environmentalist, I’m social activist, I’m so-and-so activist. Jahan daav lage wahin?”
‘Highly objectionable’, ‘disturbing’
The above remarks are “highly objectionable and disturbing”, the letter addressed to the Chief Justice on May 22 said.
This letter has been endorsed by 533 citizens including farmers, lawyers, social and environmental activists, academics, scientists, wildlife biologists, conservationists, educators, engineers, architects and students. Nearly 50 organisations and collectives are also signatory to the letter. These include the Himdhara Environment Research and Action Collective and the Joshimath Bachao Sangharsh Samiti in Uttarakhand, the pan-India National Alliance for Climate and Ecological Justice and Vanashakti, a Mumbai-based NGO that has filed numerous petitions in courts for environment protection.
The CJI’s remarks were on the larger right of citizens to protect the environment and question illegal decisions and irregularities, and risk environmental scrutiny and public-interest litigation as being understood as “anti-development”, the letter said.
“With utmost respect, it must be stated plainly: such framing is factually inaccurate, constitutionally troubling and potentially dangerous,” it said. “It risks portraying citizens who seek lawful scrutiny of environmental decision-making as a suspect constituency, rather than as participants in a constitutional democracy performing both a right and a duty.”
Even though the CJI’s remarks were only oral observations and not part of the judgment, they seem to “trivialise or delegitimise environmental objections”, it said. And such statements by India’s apex court “may discourage future petitioners, embolden appraisal authorities to treat public concern as an inconvenience and signal to the NGT that environmental scrutiny is disfavoured”, it said.
‘Environmentalist is not a term to delegitimise’
The CJI’s suggestion that environmental litigation paralyses development is directly contradicted by available evidence, the letter claimed, citing a report by Indian Express that found that in more than one lakh NGT orders between 2020 and 2025, the tribunal upheld the developer’s position in approximately four out of every five appeals that challenged environmental and forest clearances.
India is currently witnessing a suite of environmental and ecological issues, from severe heatwaves and poor air quality to forest loss; and all its biogeographic regions are threatened too, the letter added. The Indian Constitution gives citizens the right (and duty) to protect their natural environment. So citizens and affected communities who approach courts for these are “not subverting these institutions, but are merely using them for their intended purpose”.
“They are trying to hold the State to the standards it has set for itself and no more. To characterise this as a ‘problem’ is to perhaps characterise constitutional democracy itself as a problem,” the letter read.
The letter also strongly objected to the “casual deployment of the label ‘environmentalist’ as a term of delegitimisation”.
“‘Environmentalist’ has a positive connotation: as citizens who are fulfilling their duty under Article 51 (A)(g). In fact, the constitution envisages every citizen (including judges) to be a ‘guardian of the environment’ … In many instances, litigation is the ‘last resort’ precisely because environmental planning is not yet integrated into the core of project design in India,” it noted.
“We take strong objection to the casual deployment of the label ‘environmentalist’ as a term of delegitimisation,” said Prafulla Samantara, a senior environmentalist from Odisha and National Convenor, Lok Shakti Abhiyan.
“We citizens who discharge our constitutional duty by raising concerns about inadequately appraised development projects are not obstructing the state, but are performing an obligation that the constitution places upon us,” he said in a statement. Samantara is also one of the signatories of the letter.
Withdraw CJI’s remarks, say greens
The letter demanded immediate structural reforms, including applying the mitigation hierarchy wherein avoidance comes first, followed by minimisation, restoration and opting for compensation or offsetting only as a last resort.
“The need of the hour is not less environmental scrutiny, but better planning, better appraisal, better science-policy integration, better compliance, greater transparency and a judicial climate that reassures citizens that lawful environmental concern remains integral to Indian democracy and to the Fundamental Right to Life itself,” it noted.
Among the demands the letter has put forward is that the Supreme Court withdraw the oral remarks made by the CJI and that the court “stand firm in the decades of legacy of environmental jurisprudence it has itself built and to signal clearly that in the world’s largest democracy, the rule of environmental law is a pillar of – and not barrier to – development that is constitutionally and legally sound, widely inclusive and ecologically sustainable.”
‘Environmental movements have shaped India’
The CCG, a collective of former government officials, also came down heavily on the CJI’s remarks of May 11.
“The CJI’s remarks against environmental activists and litigants, suggesting that these activists obstruct ‘development’, reveal a bias and prejudice that is alarming, coming from the highest judicial authority of the country, an authority whose mandate is to approach every issue without pre-conceived notions and decide each case on merits,” said their statement, which called out the CJI’s remarks as “disparaging”.
The CCG’s letter noted that India’s “environmental integrity” has been “shaped and strengthened by important environmental movements”. They listed several examples. One was that of the Silent Valley agitation in Kerala where scientists, environmentalists, poets and local people protested against a dam that was proposed on the Kunthipuzha river by the Kerala State Electricity Board.
“This movement caused India to be recognised, internationally, as an environmentally conscious country,” the CCG said. “The Chipko movement in Uttarakhand which led to the enactment of the Forest Conservation Act, 1980, the Narmada Bachao Andolan in Madhya Pradesh and Gujarat against the Sardar Sarovar Dam, the Appiko movement in Karnataka against commercial logging were all socially driven by concerned citizens who refused to accept the proposed “development” interventions that would despoil forests and ecosystems intricately woven with local livelihoods, culture, sustenance and identity. They were, while upholding the principles of the right to life and environmental protection, fulfilling the mandate of conservation placed on them by the Constitution.”
“We hope the Hon’ble CJI will encourage rather than discourage citizens from raising their voice for the ecological integrity of our country and recognise that this is fundamental to our country’s economic security and growth,” the CCG letter urged.
The signatories of this letter include Harsh Mander (former IAS officer with the government of Madhya Pradesh), K.P. Fabian (former ambassador to Italy) and Meena Gupta (former Secretary, Ministry of Environment and Forests) who is also a petitioner for two cases filed in the Calcutta High Court about the Great Nicobar projects being implemented by the union government in violation of the Forest Rights Act and by ignoring the dissent expressed by indigenous communities on the island.
Sustainable development is an imperative
It is important to realise the tremendous pressures that our forests, rivers, coasts and terrestrial, riverine and marine wildlife are witnessing from unplanned and sub-optimally regulated developmental projects, said Rohit Jha, an ecologist with a decade of field experience in different Indian ecosystems.
“Proponents think of complying with environment-related laws and rules as an unnecessary burden. This is besides the fact that there is a trend of these regulations themselves having been relaxed gradually to favour proponents at the cost of expediting clearances,” he told The Wire. Environment Impact Assessment reports also frequently under-report or misrepresent facts on ground with respect to wildlife presence; the voices and opinions of local communities too are frequently brushed aside, he added.
“In such a scenario, many a times, public-spirited citizens and people who care for the country’s ecological wealth are left with only the judiciary for a fair adjudication and a forum where legitimate environmental concerns will be addressed. To then hear the CJI speak disparagingly of the litigants and to paint activists in a particular light is, to put it mildly, dangerous and unprecedented,” Jha said.
India needs urgent “structural reforms in the environment planning and appraisal architecture“ to serve both proponent and environmental interests. “Our country’s long-term economic well-being is predicated on the foundation of ecological security. Sustainable and equitable development is not a choice, rather it is an ecological and economic imperative,” he said.
[Aathira Perinchery is an independent journalist based in Kerala in southern India. She is a trained wildlife biologist who later took up science journalism. Courtesy: The Wire, an Indian nonprofit news and opinion website. It was founded in 2015 by Siddharth Varadarajan, Sidharth Bhatia, and M. K. Venu.]
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The Full Text of Letter by Lawyers and Law Professionals
Open Letter from Lawyers and Law Professionals to the Hon’ble Chief Justice of India on Environmental Rule of Law and the Future of Constitutional Environmentalism
To
The Hon’ble Chief Justice of India,
Supreme Court of India,
New Delhi
Sub: An appeal to withdraw unfair observations against environmental activists and grassroots communities and re-affirm constitutional values, in light of the recent Pipavav Port proceedings.
Hon’ble Chief Justice,
We the undersigned are lawyers, law students, law faculty, law researchers and activists trained in law, writing to you from across India, in our capacity as members of the National Alliance for Justice, Accountability & Rights (NAJAR), a progressive platform of law professionals. We are deeply dismayed by certain observations[1] made by your Court[2] recently, which cast unjust aspersions on concerned citizens, communities and collectives defending the ecology, within the framework of law, statutory institutions and jurisprudence evolved by this Court, over decades. We appeal to you to kindly withdraw these remarks and affirm the environmental jurisprudence laid down by this Hon’ble Court in numerous other landmark cases.
This open letter is prompted by the recent proceedings relating to the expansion of Gujarat Pipavav Port, in which the Supreme Court declined to review the National Green Tribunal’s order upholding the environmental and CRZ clearance, while making observations that cast environmental objections as a ‘routine impediment to development’. Understandably, these remarks have been met with sharp responses[3] from many[4] people[5] in the environmental justice movements.
As law professionals associated with democratic and constitutional traditions of public reasoning and justice, we hold your office in high regard and trust you will reaffirm commitment to the constitutional tradition that the Supreme Court of India has developed over many decades.
We are writing because the observations made extends beyond the outcome in one case. It relates to a broader jurisprudential shift:
- from viewing environmental litigation as an integral part of constitutional governance towards treating it as a suspect form of obstruction.
- from recognising citizens as enforcers of statutory duties, towards dismissing them as “so-called environmental activists”.
- from subjecting environmental decision-making to rule-of-law scrutiny towards deference to project clearances and administrative expertise, even where the record reveals inconsistencies, omissions and unresolved public concerns.
This systematic shift sits uneasily with the history of Indian public law, with the statutory design of the National Green Tribunal Act, 2010, and with the Court’s own environmental jurisprudence, which has repeatedly treated environmental protection as part of constitutional governance rather than as an external constraint upon it.
I. Environmental public interest litigation as a constitutional pathway:
Public interest litigation in India emerged from judicial innovation. The Supreme Court widened the locus standi so that public-spirited citizens could move the Court when vulnerable and underrepresented interests lacked effective access to justice. Environmental PILs became one of the most important aspects of this jurisdiction. Through such cases, the Court gave substantive content to Articles 21, 48A and 51A(g), and developed foundational principles of Indian environmental law, including the precautionary principle, the public trust doctrine and inter-generational equity.
Scepticism toward environmental PILs, therefore, raises institutional questions. When environmental petitioners are described as ‘obstacles’ to governance, or dismissing them as “so-called environmental activists” routinely opposed to development, the Court’s own role in creating and legitimising this form of jurisdiction recedes from view. Environmental litigation emerged because ordinary administrative structures often did not safeguard public goods and natural resources. It exists to ensure that legality, transparency, participation and constitutional values are not sacrificed to expediency.
The constitutional scheme permits and encourages citizens to approach courts to protect common natural resources. The presence of such litigation indicates that constitutional remedies are being used in the manner contemplated by this jurisprudence and citizens should be encouraged to do so. These are nothing short of ‘patriotic’ acts to protect the nation by reinforcing the rule of law. In this context, remarks suggesting that the “first attempt is to stall everything” risk mischaracterizing the exercise of constitutional remedies as obstruction. Environmental PIL is a jurisdiction created and legitimised by the Court itself to scrutinise executive action. To frame recourse to it as a ‘tactic of stalling’ undermines the spirit of Articles 32 and 226, and risks discouraging citizens from invoking the very remedies the Constitution guarantees.
II. Citizens who invoke environmental law and their constitutional role:
Article 48 A places an obligation on the State to protect and improve the environment and to safeguard forests and wildlife. Article 51 A(g) describes a fundamental duty of every citizen to protect and improve the natural environment, including forests, lakes, rivers and wildlife. The Supreme Court has repeatedly linked these provisions to Article 21 and, recently, to Article 14 as well, affirming that environmental protection and protection against the adverse effects of climate change form part of the constitutional guarantee of life, dignity and equal concern. Judges, as citizens and as constitutional functionaries, also stand within the ethical horizon of Article 51A(g), which recognizes protection and improvement of the natural environment as a fundamental duty.
In this framework, environmental litigants appear as participants in constitutional governance. Petitioners are often residents, fishers, farmers, adivasis, dalits, women, students, local people’s organisations, social movements, public-spirited citizens, researchers and lawyers who invoke existing laws because regulatory institutions have not applied them with sufficient rigour. Their pleadings rely on statutes enacted by Parliament, delegated legislation issued by the executive, and precedents of constitutional courts.
Environmental actors in litigation do not function as market lobbies. Their legal role as litigants or researchers is to insist that when the State alters coasts, forests, rivers, wetlands, commons or community livelihoods, it must do so through lawful procedures, accurate disclosures, meaningful public participation, consultations, free, prior, informed consent and constitutionally defensible reasoning. Rule of law provides the basis on which development claims constitutional legitimacy.
III. The National Green Tribunal and scrutiny of clearances:
The National Green Tribunal Act, 2010 states that it is ‘An Act to provide for the establishment of a National Green Tribunal for the effective and expeditious disposal of cases relating to environmental protection and conservation of forests and other natural resources including enforcement of any legal right relating to environment and giving relief and compensation for damages to persons and property and for matters connected therewith or incidental thereto.’ The Tribunal is, therefore, a specialised judicial forum with powers to examine environmental decision-making using both legal and technical standards.
This statutory purpose is significant in the present moment. Recent analysis by the Indian Express[6] systematically analyzes over 1,00,000 NGT orders between 2020 and 2025 and suggests that, in appeals involving environmental and forest clearances, the Tribunal has ruled in favour of project developers in four out of five cases, either by upholding contested clearances or staying their denial. In 329 appeals filed by citizens and activists against the grant of clearances by the government, only about 20 per cent succeeded. In contrast, when project proponents appealed against the denial or cancellation of clearances, they obtained relief in nearly 80 per cent of cases. The asymmetry is even sharper for the period 2024-2025, when approximately 7 percent of citizen appeals challenging clearances succeeded compared to around 88 per cent of industry appeals against denial of approvals.
If this data accurately captures current tendencies, a body created to provide environmental safeguards is increasingly functioning as a forum that regularizes or protects project approvals. In such circumstances, a combination of deference to the NGT and reluctance to re‑examine its outcomes risks constructing a closed cycle: regulatory clearance, followed by tribunal affirmation, followed by appellate restraint.
In such a setting, appellate review matters all the more. Section 22 of the NGT Act provides for appeals to the Supreme Court from NGT decisions on any one or more of the grounds specified in Section 100 of the Code of Civil Procedure, 1908 (5 of 1908). Respect for a specialised tribunal does not require that its orders be insulated from review on those questions. Where legal issues concern misdescription, non-disclosure, questionable public consultation, non-application of mind, or non-compliance with prior judicial directions, appellate scrutiny is not a departure from institutional design. Infact, this can be seen from the Hon’ble Supreme Court’s own precedents.
IV. The Pipavav proceedings and rule-of-law concerns:
The recent Pipavav proceedings illustrate these issues. Public reports indicate that the Court declined to interfere with the NGT order upholding the 2025 environmental and CRZ clearance, while observing that development cannot be stalled in the name of environment and asking whether there was any project in the country welcomed by environmentalists! The 2025 EC order may be more detailed than the earlier one, but the public record still appears to raise questions of internal consistency and legal adequacy. The legal difficulties in the Pipavav matter were concrete and identifiable. In 2013, the National Green Tribunal in Gau Raxa Hitraxak Manch and Gauchar Paryavaran Bachav Trust, Rajula v. Union of India set aside the 2012 environmental clearance for the same project and had already flagged defects relating to unanswered public hearing concerns, especially around Shiyalbet access and amenities, dredging impacts, coal dust, mangroves, gauchar land, groundwater, salinity and local livelihoods, and had directed the Ministry to complete the statutory process afresh.
The 2025 clearance, despite being more elaborate in form, still records “no tree cutting” and “no forest area” while also acknowledging dense mangroves, reserved forest in the project location, and a direct impact on 0.3 hectares of mangroves. It also states that the project does not involve any court case or litigation, despite the earlier NGT proceedings and the project’s long record of challenge and reconsideration. These are just a few of the prima facie contradictions that raise legal questions about internal consistency, disclosure, compliance with prior judicial directions, and the adequacy of public consultation that were fit for appellate scrutiny on substantial questions of law. They fall squarely within the framework contemplated by Section 22 of the NGT Act.
There is also a particular irony here. Gauchar was not incidental to the earlier dispute. It was central enough to figure in the very name of one of the petitioning formations. Yet gauchar does not receive much attention in the later framing of the controversy. If that is so, it raises not only ecological concerns but also concerns about whether the commons-based and livelihood dimensions of the dispute have been adequately apprehended within the clearance process itself, especially when the 2013 order named it specifically as one of the requirements during reassessment. When a case of this kind is primarily framed as an ‘example of environmental obstruction to development’, the legal character of the appeal is obscured, and the space for constitutional and doctrinal engagement narrows. Rule of law and faith in the judicial system is also eroded if this is to serve as a precedent of the Apex Court.
V. Development and constitutional environmentalism:
Indian environmental jurisprudence has consistently recognized that development and environmental protection must be considered together. But the Constitution does not permit “development” to be understood only from the standpoint of scale, capital or executive priority. The Preamble commits the Republic to justice, social, economic and political; to equality of status and opportunity; and to the dignity of the individual. Articles 14 and 21 require that State action affecting natural resources and human livelihoods satisfy standards of fairness, reasonableness and non-arbitrariness.
The matter also cannot be understood only as a conflict between “environment” and “development.” Where fisherfolk, coastal residents and other local communities face displacement, reduced access, livelihood disruption or heightened ecological risk, development is being affected for them as well. A constitutional court ought not to adopt a conception of development exhausted by the entry of large corporations, major port infrastructure or aggregate investment figures, while treating the loss of livelihood, habitat, commons and local economic security as ‘secondary’ or dispensable. Every citizen counts within the constitutional order, and every community affected by environmental decision-making is entitled to equal concern. The Constitution does not rank the interests of large infrastructure above the equal dignity and material security of affected citizens and nature-based communities.
The Supreme Court in its jurisprudence over the years has repeatedly highlighted the Public Trust doctrine. The state as a trustee of natural resources must ensure that the public resources are protected for the benefit of the public. Citizens rely on the court to hold the state accountable as the trustee of our collective resources.
In a period of climate instability and ecological stress, institutions of the State, including the judiciary, are facing strong pressures to treat mangroves, groundwater, estuarine systems, biodiversity corridors, fish habitats and village commons as ‘expendable’ in the face of competing economic claims. Constitutional environmentalism points towards a different orientation, one in which environmental law, climate obligations and the public trust doctrine frame the terms of development rather than operate at its margins.
VI. When Judicial Non-Intervention Has Had Consequences:
Concerns about environmental litigation “stalling” development must also be examined in light of instances where judicial non-intervention, or inconsistent judicial approaches, have coincided with serious ecological and human consequences.
Mangalore Airport Runway (2010): Public interest litigations raised concerns about the design and safety compliance of the second runway at Mangalore International Airport, alleging departures from established aviation norms. In Environment Support Group & Ors. v. Union of India & Ors. (SLP (C) 1172 of 2003), the Supreme Court declined to interfere, while directing compliance with applicable laws and environmental standards. In May 2010, an Air India Express aircraft overshot the tabletop runway and crashed, causing significant loss of life. The episode highlights how early warnings raised through environmental litigation may warrant closer judicial scrutiny.
Hydroelectric Projects in Uttarakhand: After the 2013 Kedarnath disaster, the Supreme Court stayed several proposed hydroelectric projects and constituted expert bodies to assess their role in aggravating ecological damage. Although initial findings pointed to severe environmental impacts, subsequent proceedings led to reconsideration and eventual permissions for multiple projects. The shifting judicial course has been criticized for creating uncertainty in an already fragile Himalayan ecosystem prone to landslides and flooding.
Char Dham Road Project: In litigation concerning road widening in the Himalayas, questions of defence requirements and environmental stability were placed before the Court. While earlier directions emphasised technical review and safeguards, later orders permitted wider road configurations citing strategic needs. Environmental activists have argued that ecological stability is itself foundational to long-term strategic security in such terrain.
Sterlite Copper Plant: The Sterlite litigation reflects findings that environmental clearances were obtained on incomplete disclosures, followed by reversals and subsequent affirmations of closure orders. The prolonged adjudicatory history illustrates how delayed or inconsistent enforcement can entrench environmental harm before corrective measures are taken.
Sethusamudram Project: By contrast, the Supreme Court’s direction to examine alternative alignments for the Sethusamudram Shipping Canal Project reflected sensitivity to ecological concerns relating to the Gulf of Mannar. It demonstrates that judicial scrutiny can facilitate environmentally safer alternatives rather than obstruct development.
Taken together, these episodes show that environmental litigation often functions as an early constitutional safeguard. Careful and consistent judicial engagement strengthens governance, while premature dismissal or inconsistency can carry lasting ecological and human costs.
VII. A Plea to Reaffirm Environmental Jurisprudence rooted in constitutional Ethos:
This letter does not argue for a summary halt to all ‘development projects’, that are pursued with due regard to law, principles of ecological sustainability and social equity. It seeks a re-affirmation of constitutional environmentalism in judicial practice.
Towards this end, we respectfully request the Hon’ble Chief Justice of the Supreme Court to withdraw the unfair observations against environmental activists and grassroots communities and re-affirm:
- Environmental PILs and NGT appeals as constitutional and statutory enforcement actions, rather than as ‘presumptively motivated attempts to impede development’.
- Citizens, lawyers, researchers, activists and affected communities who invoke environmental statutes be seen as performing roles contemplated by Articles 48A and 51A(g), and by the Court’s own jurisprudence on environmental duties and access to justice.
- NGT decisions are accorded appropriate weight while remaining subject to appellate review on substantial questions of law under Section 22 of the NGT Act.
- Substantial questions of environmental legality, such as misrepresentation, inadequate public hearing, non-application of mind and divergence from prior judicial directions, continue to receive careful judicial consideration and review.
- Judicial consideration of development remains anchored in the Preamble and in Articles 14, 19 and 21, so that development does not become synonymous only with large infrastructure, corporate investment or project speed, but continues to include ecological justice and the dignity, livelihoods, commons and equal worth of affected citizens and communities.
- Judicial discourse on environmental litigation remains anchored in the constitutional text and in the Court’s environmental decisions, including the recent recognition of rights associated with climate impacts and environmental stability.
The authority of the Supreme Court in environmental matters has rested on a commitment to legality, participation, transparency and care for the natural world as a constitutional value. Many lawyers, students, academics and citizens across the country look to the Supreme Court to hold this line in times of strain.
We, therefore, urge you to re-affirm these core values and the sanctity of the legal and judicial system, at the highest level.
Respectfully,
Concerned lawyers, law students, law faculty, law researchers and activists trained in law and members of the National Alliance for Justice, Accountability & Rights
[Letter courtesy: Countercurrents.org, an India-based independent online journal founded in 2002, publishing articles on peace, democracy, social justice, ecology, secularism, and people’s movements. Edited by Binu Mathew, it is known for giving space to progressive, grassroots, and alternative voices often ignored by mainstream media.]
