LLM Group 6 Environment and Legal Order Prevention and Control of Pollution 2015 Question Paper with Solutions

Air pollution defined

Section 2(b) of the Air (Prevention and Control of Pollution) Act, 1981 defines air pollution as the presence in the atmosphere of any air pollutant. The definition does its work through the meaning of air pollutant. Two points follow from it. Air pollution is a matter of presence at a harmful concentration, so the law regulates by standards rather than by forbidding every emission. And no harm need actually have occurred, because the threshold is what "may be or tend to be" injurious.

Pollutants defined

Section 2(a) of the Air Act defines an air pollutant as any solid, liquid or gaseous substance, including noise, present in the atmosphere in such concentration as may be or tend to be injurious to human beings or other living creatures or plants or property or environment. The words "including noise" were inserted by amendment in 1987. Section 2(b) of the Environment (Protection) Act, 1986 gives the general definition of an environmental pollutant in the same pattern: any solid, liquid or gaseous substance present in such concentration as may be, or tend to be, injurious to environment.

The standards set, for example, an annual limit of 60 micrograms per cubic metre for PM10 and 40 for PM2.5.

Causes: natural and man-made

Some air pollution is natural: dust storms, forest fires and pollen. Most of the pollution that the law addresses is man-made, and in India it has six main causes.

Vehicles. Exhaust gases and particles, and the dust vehicles raise from roads. In M.C. Mehta v. Union of India, (1998) 6 SCC 63, decided on 28 July 1998, the Government's own White Paper attributed seventy per cent of Delhi's air pollution to vehicles, compared with twenty per cent in 1970.

Industry and power generation. Stack emissions of particulates, sulphur dioxide and nitrogen oxides from boilers, kilns, smelters and thermal power plants, and fugitive emissions of dust and vapour from processes.

Effects on health

The Global Burden of Disease Study 2019, reported for the Indian States in The Lancet Planetary Health in 2021, attributed 1.67 million deaths in India in 2019 to air pollution, 17.8 per cent of all deaths in the country. Ambient particulate pollution accounted for 0.98 million deaths and household air pollution for 0.61 million. Fine particles penetrate deep into the lungs and enter the bloodstream, causing respiratory disease, heart disease, stroke and lung cancer. Worldwide, the World Health Organization's fact sheet updated in October 2024 associates ambient and household air pollution with 6.7 million premature deaths a year.

The law recognises that the harm reaches those who do not cause it. In Murli S. Deora v. Union of India, AIR 2002 SC 40, (2001) 8 SCC 765, decided on 2 November 2001, the Supreme Court held that a non-smoker cannot be made a helpless victim of air pollution by others' smoking, because that deprives the non-smoker of the right to life under Article 21, and it prohibited smoking in auditoriums, hospitals, educational institutions, libraries, court buildings, public offices and public conveyances.

Economy. The Lancet study estimated the output lost to air pollution in 2019 at 36.8 billion US dollars, 1.36 per cent of India's gross domestic product.

The legal framework, briefly

The Constitution. Article 48A directs the State to protect and improve the environment, and Article 51A(g) makes it every citizen's duty. In Subhash Kumar v. State of Bihar, AIR 1991 SC 420, (1991) 1 SCC 598, the Supreme Court held that the right to life under Article 21 includes the right to enjoy pollution-free water and air, and that a citizen may move the Court under Article 32 to remove pollution that impairs it.

The Air Act, 1981. Enacted under Article 253 for the whole of India. The Central and State Pollution Control Boards administer it. The Central Board sets air quality standards under section 16 and State Boards set emission standards under section 17. State Governments declare air pollution control areas under section 19 and may ban unapproved fuels and the burning of material there. Section 21 requires the State Board's prior consent to establish or operate an industrial plant in such an area, and section 22 forbids emission above the standards. Section 31A lets a Board direct closure and cut off electricity or water.

The Commission for Air Quality Management in National Capital Region and Adjoining Areas Act, 2021. A single commission for the airshed of Delhi and the adjoining parts of Punjab, Haryana, Rajasthan and Uttar Pradesh, with power under section 12 to co-ordinate those Governments and direct closure. Non-compliance is an offence under section 14, but a farmer burning stubble faces environmental compensation under section 15 instead.

Vehicles and the criminal law. Under section 20 of the Air Act the State Government instructs the authority registering motor vehicles to enforce emission standards, and section 190(2) of the Motor Vehicles Act, 1988 punishes driving a vehicle that violates the standards on air pollution. Section 280 of the Bharatiya Nyaya Sanhita, 2023 punishes whoever voluntarily vitiates the atmosphere so as to make it noxious to the health of persons nearby, with fine up to one thousand rupees.

Adjudication and policy. The National Green Tribunal Act, 2010 lists the Air Act in Schedule I, so the Tribunal decides substantial questions and awards compensation arising under it. The National Clean Air Programme, launched in January 2019 for 131 cities, aims at up to 40 per cent reduction in PM10, or attainment of the national standard, by 2025-26.