Ratlam and the Duty to Perform

In one line

Ratlam is the case that decided a municipality cannot answer a complaint about sewage by saying it has no money, and it did so under a criminal procedure section, five years before any court said Article 21 reached the environment.

MU has set it by name twice, once as Ratlam Municipality v. Vardhichand and once as Municipal Council, Ratlam v. Shri Vardhichand and Others. A named case in a question is an invitation to work it in full, which is what this chapter does.

The case

Municipal Council, Ratlam v. Shri Vardhichand, AIR 1980 SC 1622.

Facts

Residents of a ward in Ratlam complained to the Sub-Divisional Magistrate that the municipality had failed to build drains, that effluent from a nearby alcohol plant flowed through the streets, and that in the absence of public conveniences the poor used the road.

The Magistrate made an order under section 133 of the Code of Criminal Procedure 1973 requiring the municipality to construct drains and remove the nuisance within six months.

The municipality resisted on one ground: it had no funds.

Held

The order was upheld.

On section 133. The section reads as a discretion but its import is mandatory once the jurisdictional facts are present. Where a magistrate has before him information and evidence disclosing a public nuisance, he shall act.

On want of funds. A statutory body cannot plead want of funds against a duty imposed on it for the protection of public health.

On the remedy. The section authorises both a time limit and specific directions, and the Court directed the municipality to budget for the work.

On the Constitution. Article 47 makes the improvement of public health a paramount principle of governance and among the State's primary duties.

Why the case matters more than its size

It predates the Article 21 line

Ratlam is of 1980. The first holding that pollution violates Article 21 is T. Damodhar Rao of January 1987. So Ratlam is not an Article 21 case and must never be presented as one. It got its result out of a criminal procedure section read in the light of a Directive Principle, which shows that the constitutional route was not the only route available and was not the first one taken.

It answers the excuse that defeats most environmental orders

Every municipal body in India, asked why it has not built a sewer, says that it has no money. Ratlam holds that this is not an answer to a duty imposed for the protection of public health. That single holding has been the foundation of every subsequent order requiring a local body to act, including Almitra H. Patel v. Union of India, AIR 2000 SC 1256, where the Court held that the law makes it obligatory on municipal authorities to discharge their municipal functions and at least to prevent filth and garbage from lying strewn in public places, and that local authorities exist to provide services to citizens and not merely to provide employment.