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Resource Management and The Law
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LLM · Group 6 Environment and Legal Order
2025-26 Examination
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LLM Group 6 Environment and Legal Order Resource Management and The Law 2025-26 Question Paper with Solutions
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First published on munotes.in on 14 September 2026.
Published by munotes.in, Mumbai.
Model answers written and edited by the munotes.in editorial desk.
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The University does not publish an official answer key for this paper. The answers in this volume are model answers, written to show how a full-mark answer is built. They are a study aid, not an authority on what an examiner marked.
The question paper reproduced here is the paper as set by the University of Mumbai at the 2025-26 examination.
The law in these answers is stated as at September 2026, and five developments date most textbooks on this subject. The SHANTI Act, 2025 received assent on 20 December 2025 and repeals the Atomic Energy Act, 1962 and the Civil Liability for Nuclear Damage Act, 2010 when it commences, which had not happened by mid-September 2026. The Occupational Safety, Health and Working Conditions Code, 2020 replaced the Mines Act, 1952 on 21 November 2025. The Forest (Conservation) Act, 1980 has been the Van (Sanrakshan Evam Samvardhan) Adhiniyam since its 2023 amendment. On 29 July 2026 the Supreme Court held in Vanashakti v. Union of India that prior environmental clearance is mandatory and that only a narrow, time-bound scheme made by notification can cure a project begun without it. And the Plachimada ruling that ground water is held in public trust was reversed in part by a Division Bench of the Kerala High Court on 7 April 2005.
Contents
The questions below are the paper as the University of Mumbai set it at the 2025-26 examination, in the order it was set.
MarksPage
The Paper as Set
The questions in this volume are the questions asked at the 2025-26 examination, reproduced as the University of Mumbai set them, in the order it set them. Nothing has been reworded, added or left out. Only the answers are ours. See the original question paper.
Duration 3 hours · Total marks 100 · 7 questions answered
How to use this volume
Solve the paper first, under exam conditions and against the clock. Then read the answers here and mark your own. Reading a solution before attempting the question feels productive and teaches very little, because recognising an answer is not the same as being able to write one.
1.Explain the Statement, "Salinity is a major problem in effective Ground Water Management in India". Also, discuss how does Rainwater Harvesting contributes to Water Conservation in urban cities of India?[25]
Answer
For full marks, cover: there are two separate tasks and each carries about half the marks. First, explain why salinity is a major problem for effective ground water management, which needs the causes, the scale, the irreversibility and the reasons the law finds it hard to control, supported by Attakoya Thangal and Tirupur. Second, discuss how rainwater harvesting conserves water in Indian cities, which needs the mechanism, the legal provisions (the Model Building Bye-Laws 2016 offered to States and cities, Tamil Nadu 2003, the Maharashtra Act of 2009, the Central Ground Water Authority's conditions) and the Supreme Court's directions in Intellectuals Forum. End each half on its limits.
Ground water and salinity: the facts that frame the statement
Ground water is India's largest source for drinking and irrigation. The Dynamic Ground Water Resources Assessment 2025, released by the Ministry of Jal Shakti on 30 December 2025, estimated annual recharge at 448.52 billion cubic metres, extractable resource at 407.75 and actual extraction at 247.22, a national stage of extraction of 60.63 per cent. Of 6,762 assessment units, 10.8 per cent were over-exploited and 1.88 per cent were classified as saline, meaning that their ground water is unfit for ordinary use regardless of how much of it there is.
Salinity is measured chiefly as total dissolved solids. Indian Standard IS 10500:2012 sets an acceptable limit of 500 mg/l for drinking water and a permissible limit of 2,000 mg/l only where no alternative source exists. Water above that is, for practical purposes, lost to drinking use.
Salinity reaches an aquifer in three ways. It may be geogenic, present in the rock and sediment of arid inland tracts. It may be sea water ingress, where pumping lowers the fresh water table near the coast and the underlying sea water moves in. Or it may be man-made, from irrigation without drainage, which concentrates salts as water evaporates, and from industrial effluent high in dissolved solids.
Why salinity is a major problem for effective ground water management
First, it destroys the resource rather than depleting it. Fresh water floats on sea water in a coastal aquifer, and by the Ghyben-Herzberg relation about forty metres of fresh water lie below sea level for every metre of water table above it. One metre of drawdown can therefore raise the salt interface by tens of metres, and once salt has entered the pores of an aquifer it may take decades to flush out, or never leave a hard rock aquifer. A depleted aquifer recovers with rain; a salinised one often does not.
Second, it is caused by the very extraction that management finds hardest to control. The Central Ground Water Authority's guidelines of 24 September 2020 exempt agricultural activities from the requirement of a no objection certificate, and they record that 87.86 per cent of wells belong to farmers holding up to four hectares, which makes "command and control" regulation arduous. The largest draft is thus the least regulated, and near the coast it is what draws sea water in.
Third, it spreads. A village whose wells turn saline drills deeper or moves its pumping inland, lowering the head of the next fresh aquifer and extending the ingress.
Fourth, the traditional law gives the landowner the water. Illustration (g) to section 7 of the Easements Act, 1882 recognises the right of every owner of land to collect and dispose within his own limits of all water under the land which does not pass in a defined channel. Regulation must be layered over that rule, and a court may still insist on it. In Hindustan Coca-Cola Beverages (P) Ltd v. Perumatty Grama Panchayat, 2005 (2) KLT 554, a Division Bench of the Kerala High Court held on 7 April 2005 that ordinarily a person may draw ground water within reasonable limits without permission, and the Supreme Court in July 2017 closed the appeals without deciding that question.
Fifth, salinity is invisible until wells fail. A water table can be watched falling; the salt interface is known only where observation wells and water quality data exist, which is why the 2020 guidelines require annual quality monitoring of every user holding a certificate and piezometers of every project proponent drawing more than 10 cubic metres a day.
The right that salinity threatens was recognised early. In Attakoya Thangal v. Union of India, decided by the Kerala High Court in 1990, the facts were that the Lakshadweep administration proposed to augment island water supply by digging wells and pumping, although, the petitioners said, only 0.6 to 0.75 metres of ground water was available beneath the coral islands and pumping would let sea water penetrate the fresh water lens. Held. No administrative agency may function so as to make inroads into Article 21; the right to sweet water and the right to free air are attributes of the right to life; over-exploitation must be contained, a methodology for extraction evolved, and if necessary statutory regulations made and a monitoring agency set up. Why it bears. It treats the protection of an aquifer from salinity as a constitutional duty, not a technical preference.
Man-made salinity from effluent was addressed in Tirupur Dyeing Factory Owners Association v. Noyyal River Ayacutdars Protection Association, (2009) 9 SCC 737. Facts. Dyeing and bleaching units at Tirupur discharged effluent into the Noyyal, whose water was stored at the Orathupalayam dam for irrigation, and the river water showed very high dissolved solids, excess chloride and a high percentage of sodium, so that farmers in the command area could not cultivate any crop. Held. Under the polluter pays principle the units cannot escape the responsibility to meet the expenses of reversing the ecology: they must pay for removing the sludge from the river and cleaning the dam, and compensate the farmers who could not cultivate their land. Why it bears. Where salinity is caused by effluent, the law can at least make the polluter pay; where it is caused by pumping, prevention is the only remedy.
How the law responds to salinity
The response is almost entirely preventive. The 2020 guidelines bar new major industries in over-exploited units, require digital flow meters and water audits, and actively encourage industry to use saline ground water in saline areas, exempting it from abstraction charges. The Coastal Regulation Zone Notification, 2019 prohibits drawal of ground water within 200 metres of the High Tide Line in CRZ-III areas except for local communities, allows only manual withdrawal from ordinary wells between 200 and 500 metres, lets State authorities restrict it further where sea water intrusion has occurred, and permits micro irrigation promoted by Government welfare schemes for horticulture and agriculture. State laws such as the Maharashtra Groundwater (Development and Management) Act, 2009 notify stressed areas, prohibit pumping from existing deep wells of sixty metres or more in them (section 8(4)), and forbid anyone to contaminate a drinking water source (section 23).
Rainwater harvesting: how it conserves water in a city
Rainwater harvesting collects rain where it falls, either storing it in tanks for direct use or recharging it into the ground through pits, trenches and wells. In a city, where roofs and paved roads send almost all rain to drains, it is the only water intervention that adds to supply rather than dividing it.
The arithmetic is what makes it persuasive. The harvestable volume is roughly roof area multiplied by rainfall multiplied by a runoff coefficient of about 0.8 for a concrete roof. A 100 square metre roof receiving 2,000 mm of rain yields about 160 cubic metres, or 160,000 litres a year, a large part of an urban household's annual need.
Its conservation effect is fourfold: it reduces demand on municipal supply, it raises the local water table and so the yield of wells, it reduces storm water flooding by holding back runoff, and near the coast recharge raises the fresh water head that holds the salt interface down, which ties the second half of the question back to the first.
The legal mandates for urban rainwater harvesting
| Instrument | What it requires |
|---|---|
| Model Building Bye-Laws, 2016 (Ministry of Housing and Urban Affairs), a model for States and cities to adopt | Every building plan on a plot of 100 sq m or more to include a complete rainwater harvesting proposal; 33 States and Union Territories had adopted the feature by 2021 |
| Tamil Nadu Municipal Laws Ordinance, 2003 (19 July 2003) | Harvesting made compulsory for all buildings, public and private, new and existing; new buildings denied water and sewer connections without it |
| Maharashtra Groundwater Act, 2009, s. 9(7) and (8) | In notified urban areas, structures on premises of 100 sq m or more, failing which the local body builds them and recovers the cost with a penalty; building approval and permanent water and electricity connections may be conditioned on them |
| CGWA Guidelines, 2020 | Rooftop harvesting and recharge a condition of every no objection certificate |
| Municipal development control regulations | Harvesting as a condition of building permission and occupancy |
Chennai's mandate of 2003 is the standing Indian example because it applied to existing buildings as well as new ones and was enforced through service connections, which is the lever that actually secures compliance.
The courts and rainwater harvesting
In Intellectuals Forum, Tirupathi v. State of Andhra Pradesh, (2006) 3 SCC 549, decided on 23 February 2006, the facts were that the beds of two ancient tanks at Tirupati had been alienated: the Avilala tank bed to the A.P. Housing Board and the Tirupathi Urban Development Authority under G.O. Ms. No. 84 of 1994, and 150 acres of the Peruru tank bed to Tirumala Tirupathi Devasthanam for housing under G.O. Ms. No. 181 of 1991.
Held. The State holds such resources as trustee under the public trust doctrine and their alienation attracts a high degree of judicial scrutiny. Declining to order complete restoration and revival of the two tanks, and adopting an expert committee's report, the Court allowed the construction already done but stopped any more, and directed a percolation tank of at least 50 acres with artificial recharge at Peruru, rooftop rainwater harvesting for every house already built on both tank beds, a complete ban on ground water abstraction at Peruru and no borewells in either area, recharge of all storm water in the colonies built at Avilala, that an area of forty acres there not be developed so as to concretise the ground surface, and installation of piezometers to monitor the ground water regime. Why it bears. It makes rainwater harvesting part of the remedy for the loss of an urban water body, and connects urban planning, recharge and the public trust.
The limits of urban rainwater harvesting
Maintenance decides results. A recharge pit without a first flush device and filter chokes with silt within a few seasons, and a choked structure satisfies a building inspector while conserving nothing.
Compliance is uneven. A mandate enforced only at the stage of building approval does not reach the existing stock of buildings, which is why Tamil Nadu's inclusion of existing buildings mattered.
Geology limits recharge. In hard rock areas with little storage, recharge structures fill quickly, and in polluted urban catchments recharge wells can carry contamination straight into an aquifer.
And harvesting supplements demand management; it does not replace it. A city that harvests rain but continues to pump its aquifer beyond recharge will still see its water table fall.
Conclusion. Salinity is a major problem in effective ground water management because it permanently removes fresh water from use, is driven by the agricultural and coastal pumping that regulation reaches least, spreads as users move to the next aquifer, and remains hidden until wells fail; 1.88 per cent of India's assessment units were already saline in the 2025 assessment, and Attakoya Thangal treats sweet water as part of the right to life. Rainwater harvesting answers part of that problem in cities by adding to the resource: it cuts demand on public supply, recharges aquifers, reduces flooding and, on the coast, raises the fresh water head that resists sea water. The Model Building Bye-Laws, 2016 provide it for plots of 100 square metres or more as a model for States and cities to adopt, the law has required it for every building in Tamil Nadu since 2003 and as a condition of every ground water certificate since 2020, and the Supreme Court ordered it in Intellectuals Forum. Its effect will depend on maintenance, enforcement through service connections, and its pairing with real limits on extraction.
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