SC: TIME TO CONTEST ENVIRONMENTAL CLEARANCE STARTS FROM FIRST PUBLIC DISCLOSURE:

The Supreme Court has clarified that the limitation period for filing an appeal against the grant of an Environmental Clearance (EC) begins from the earliest date on which the EC is communicated to the public. The decision affirms the National Green Tribunal’s (NGT) view in Save Mon Region Federation & Anr. v. Union of India, where the Tribunal held that when multiple authorities or entities are responsible for publicizing the approval, the limitation must be counted from the earliest communication made available to any member of the public. The earlier ruling had emphasized that the Ministry of Environment, Forest and Climate Change (MoEF&CC), project proponents, and other stakeholders have an obligation to disseminate the grant of EC, and that once any one of them makes such communication, the clock for filing an appeal starts running.

This principle was reiterated by a bench of Justices P.S. Narasimha and Atul S. Chandurkar while adjudicating an appeal filed by the Talli Gram Panchayat. The Panchayat had challenged the EC granted on January 5, 2017, to Ultratech Cement for a limestone mining project covering approximately 193 hectares in the villages of Talli and Bambor in Gujarat. The Panchayat approached the NGT on April 19, 2017, seeking to contest the clearance. However, the Tribunal dismissed the appeal as time-barred, noting that it had been filed beyond the statutory period of 30 days, extendable up to 60 days, as permitted under the NGT Act.

Before the Supreme Court, the Panchayat argued that it became aware of the EC only on February 14, 2017, when it obtained information through a Right to Information (RTI) request. The Panchayat therefore contended that the limitation period should be calculated from the date on which it actually received the information, not from the date on which the MoEF&CC granted the EC. It also argued that there had been no complete publication of the EC in a local newspaper as required under Clause 10 of the Environment Impact Assessment Notification, 2006 (EIA Notification, 2006), and therefore the communication could not be considered sufficient.

The respondents, including Ultratech Cement and the MoEF&CC, countered these arguments by asserting that the EC had been uploaded on the Ministry’s website on the same day it was granted, which constituted a valid mode of public communication. According to them, this upload met the requirements under the EIA Notification, which includes online publication as an acceptable form of disseminating the information.

The Supreme Court agreed with the respondents and upheld the dismissal of the appeal. The Court observed that since multiple authorities were responsible for communicating the grant of EC, communication must be treated as complete when an aggrieved person could have accessed it from the earliest form of publication. The Court noted that the EC granted on January 5, 2017, had been uploaded on the MoEF&CC’s official website the very same day, making it the first point of public communication. Therefore, the limitation period began from that date. Concluding that the appeal before the NGT was filed beyond the permissible time frame, the Supreme Court upheld the Tribunal’s decision and dismissed the Panchayat’s appeal.