Overview
- The three‑judge bench led by Chief Justice Surya Kant, which ruled on Wednesday, July 29, quashed the Centre’s July 7, 2021 Office Memorandum that created a continuing administrative route for retrospective environmental clearances.
- The court held that the 2021 OM unlawfully replaced the prior‑clearance rule in the 2006 EIA Notification and failed tests of proportionality and reasonableness under Articles 14 and 21.
- All clearances already granted under the 2017 notification or the 2021 OM remain valid unless individually challenged, but no new applications under those instruments may be entertained.
- The judgment makes clear that any future ex post facto regularisation must come through a valid, narrowly tailored, time‑bound notification under Section 3 of the Environment (Protection) Act, 1986, and not by executive office orders; the Court also retained its power under Article 142 to grant exceptional relief in specific cases.
- The decision ends an oscillating year‑long legal battle over retrospective clearances and will affect infrastructure, real estate, mining and public projects while shifting the government’s path for regularisation from administrative convenience to formal statutory rule‑making.