LLM Group 6 Environment and Legal Order Environmental Legislations 2022 Question Paper with Solutions

Where the power comes from

Parliament enacted the Environment (Protection) Act, 1986 under Article 253 to implement the decisions of the Stockholm Conference of 1972, and it chose to build the Act around one actor. Section 3(1) gives the Central Government power to take all such measures as it deems necessary or expedient for protecting and improving the quality of the environment and preventing, controlling and abating environmental pollution. The words "deems necessary or expedient" make the satisfaction subjective, so a court asks whether the Government acted within the Act and considered relevant matters, not whether the measure was wise.

Section 3(2) then lists measures the power may include, "without prejudice to the generality" of sub-section (1). The list illustrates the power; it does not confine it. That is why the Central Government could regulate coastal land use, project clearances, noise and product labels under one section without asking Parliament for new Acts. Rule 5 of the Environment (Protection) Rules, 1986 supplies the procedure for the most important of those measures: a draft notification, objections within sixty days, and a final notification, with a public interest dispensation in rule 5(4).

Power two: deciding where and whether activity may happen

Clause (v) of section 3(2) allows the Central Government to restrict areas in which any industry, operation or process shall not be carried out, or shall be carried out only subject to safeguards. This single clause is the source of the Coastal Regulation Zone Notification, 2019, the Environment Impact Assessment Notification, 2006, and the eco-sensitive zone notifications around protected areas. Through it the Centre controls land use across the country, a subject that the Constitution otherwise leaves largely to the States.

The coastal order. In Indian Council for Enviro-Legal Action v. Union of India, decided by Kuldip Singh and S. Saghir Ahmad JJ on 9 March 1995, a petition sought enforcement of the Coastal Regulation Zone Notification of 1991, and a Ministry committee had reported breaches by hotels and resorts on the Goa coast. The Supreme Court directed every coastal State to follow each restriction and prohibition in the notification meticulously and reserved for consideration the prayer that central and State authorities be constituted under section 3(3). The order matters because it treated a section 3 notification as binding law, enforceable against the States themselves, and it began the path to the coastal zone management authorities.

The National and State Coastal Zone Management Authorities and the State Environment Impact Assessment Authorities all exist under this sub-section. So does the Loss of Ecology (Prevention and Payment of Compensation) Authority for Tamil Nadu, constituted after the Supreme Court in Vellore Citizens Welfare Forum v. Union of India, (1996) 5 SCC 647, directed the Central Government to create an authority under section 3(3) to deal with tannery pollution of the river Palar, assess the loss to the ecology, identify victims and determine compensation recoverable from the polluters on the polluter pays principle.

The regulator that was asked for. In T.N. Godavarman Thirumulpad v. Union of India, (2011) 7 SCC 338, the Lafarge case, clearance for a limestone mine in Meghalaya was challenged because the land had been described as wasteland when it was forest. The Court allowed mining to continue on the facts, but said that under section 3(3) the Central Government should appoint a National Regulator for appraising projects, enforcing environmental conditions and imposing penalties. The case shows that the sub-section is the constitutional home for any independent regulator, and also that the choice to use it remains the Government's.

The remedial power read into sections 3 and 5. In Indian Council for Enviro-Legal Action v. Union of India, (1996) 3 SCC 212, chemical units at Bichhri in Rajasthan producing H acid had left toxic sludge that poisoned wells and farmland over a wide area. The Supreme Court held that sections 3 and 5 empower the Central Government to direct remedial measures and to recover their cost from the polluters, applying absolute liability and the polluter pays principle. Fifteen years later, in its judgment reported at (2011) 8 SCC 161, the Court found that the industries had complied with none of its directions and called the case a classic illustration of men with means avoiding compliance. The power existed; its enforcement did not.

Two features deserve emphasis. First, the Act regulates largely through subordinate instruments, so its content changes constantly without Parliament, which makes it flexible and also exposes it to dilution by the executive. Second, after 2023 it is mainly a civil penalty statute: imprisonment follows only under section 15F when a penalty imposed is not paid within ninety days, and penalties are in addition to relief or compensation under the National Green Tribunal Act, 2010.

Conclusion. The powers of the Central Government under the Environment (Protection) Act, 1986 are wide by design: under sections 3 to 6 it fixes the standards that section 7 makes binding, restricts where activity may occur through notifications such as the Coastal Regulation Zone Notification, 2019 and the Environment Impact Assessment Notification, 2006, creates authorities under section 3(3), issues closure directions under section 5, and since 2024 penalises through its adjudicating officers. The salient features follow from that design: an umbrella Act with nationwide reach, wide definitions, law made by notification, two core prohibitions, civil penalties and an overriding effect. The courts, from the coastal order of 1995 to Alembic and the Lafarge case, have repeatedly had to make the Centre use these powers and use them lawfully, which is both the Act's strength and its weakness.