Lawyers and Rights Groups Urge Supreme Court to Reaffirm Constitutional Environmental Protections The National Alliance for Justice, Accountability & Rights (NAJAR), a coalition of lawyers, law students, faculty, researchers, and activists, has issued an open letter to the Hon’ble Chief Justice of India, urging the Supreme Court to retract recent remarks that cast environmental activists and grassroots communities as obstacles to development. The letter, prompted by the court’s handling of the Gujarat Pipavav Port expansion case, criticizes a perceived shift in environmental jurisprudence that risks undermining constitutional protections for ecological rights. The letter highlights the Supreme Court’s dismissal of environmental objections during the Pipavav Port proceedings, where the court declined to review the National Green Tribunal’s (NGT) order upholding the project’s environmental and coastal regulation zone (CRZ) clearance. The court’s characterization of environmental concerns as a “routine impediment to development” has sparked backlash from environmental justice movements, which argue that such remarks delegitimize the role of citizens in safeguarding public goods. The open letter frames the court’s recent observations as part of a broader judicial shift. It identifies three key changes: first, the marginalization of environmental public interest litigation (PIL) as an integral part of constitutional governance, instead labeling it as obstruction; second, the dismissal of citizens as “so-called environmental activists” rather than enforcers of statutory duties; and third, the prioritization of administrative expertise over rule-of-law scrutiny in environmental decision-making.#supreme_court_of_india #national_green_triputal #gujarat_pipavav_port #national_green_triputal_act_2010
