The Water (Prevention and Control of Pollution) Amendment Act 2024

In one line

The Act that decriminalised the Water Act, and the only statute on this syllabus whose answer to "what is the law?" begins with "in which State?".

In exam wording: the Water (Prevention and Control of Pollution) Amendment Act 2024, Act 5 of 2024, received assent on 15 February 2024 and came into force on that date; being an amendment of an Article 252 Act it was itself passed on the resolutions of the Legislatures of Himachal Pradesh and Rajasthan and applies in the first instance to those two States and the Union territories, extending to any other State only when that State adopts it by a resolution under Article 252(1) read with clause (2).

Section 1: the provision that makes this chapter necessary

(2) It applies, in the first instance, to the whole of the States of Himachal Pradesh and Rajasthan and the Union territories; and it shall apply to such other State which adopts this Act by resolution passed in that behalf under clause (1) of article 252 of the Constitution read with clause (2) thereof.

Read it twice. On 15 February 2024 the decriminalised Water Act became law in two States and the Union territories, and in no other part of India. Everywhere else the Act of 1974 continued exactly as before, with imprisonment.

Maharashtra resolved in March 2025, becoming the eighth State to adopt.

And nothing printed tells you this. The consolidated text on India Code carries the amended sections with footnotes reading "w.e.f. 15-2-2024" and no territorial marking of any kind. Read literally, that date is the date the amendment came into force in Himachal Pradesh, Rajasthan and the Union territories. It is not the date it came into force anywhere else, and there is no published register of which States have resolved. A commentary that prints "section 43 now carries a penalty" as a flat national statement is wrong about every State that has not.

What the Act did, section by section

Sections 41 and 41A. Section 41 was substituted and split. Section 41 now covers failure to comply with a direction under section 20(2) or 20(3), the information-gathering power. Section 41A covers failure to comply with an order under section 32(1)(c), a court direction under section 33(2), or a direction under section 33A. Both carry a penalty of not less than ten thousand rupees up to fifteen lakh, with an additional penalty of ten thousand rupees a day while the contravention continues.

Section 42, penalty for certain acts. The seven acts remain: destroying a Board pillar or notice, obstructing a person acting under Board orders, damaging Board property, failing to furnish information, failing to intimate an accident under section 31, knowingly making a false statement in information required under the Act, and knowingly making a false statement to obtain a consent. What changed is the consequence: a penalty of ten thousand to fifteen lakh, plus ten thousand a day.