The middle path | Explaining Supreme Court’s latest verdict on post facto environmental clearances
The Supreme Court of India has struck down a 2021 government memorandum that allowed for the retrospective legalization of environmental clearances for infrastructure projects. The court ruled that such clearances must be limited to exceptional cases of public interest.
Why it matters
This ruling reinforces environmental protection standards and limits the government's ability to bypass regulatory impact assessments.
The Supreme Court has quashed an Office Memorandum issued by the Ministry of Environment, Forest and Climate Change in 2021 on the ground that an administrative order cannot create a perpetual and parallel regime to grant retrospective authorisation to big-ticket infrastructure projects commenced without prior, valid environmental clearance. A three-judge Bench of Chief Justice of India Surya Kant and Justices Joymalya Bagchi and Vipul M. Pancholi held on Wednesday (July 29, 2026) that the permanent regime of ex post facto grant of environmental clearances (EC) introduced through the 2021 Office Memorandum (OM) supplanted the mandate of prior green permit under an Environment Impact Assessment (EIA) notification of 2006. However, the court has not barred retrospective ECs totally. It has in fact adopted a note of reconciliation and called for "measured regularisation".
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