Court caseAIR 1996 SC 2715

A public interest petition under Article 32 against the pollution of the river Palar and the agricultural land of Vellore district (Tamil Nadu) by the untreated effluents of hundreds of tanneries. The Supreme Court held that sustainable development is a balancing concept between ecology and development accepted as part of customary international law, that the precautionary principle and the polluter pays principle are essential features of sustainable development and are already part of the environmental law of the country, and directed the Central Government to constitute an authority under section 3(3) of the Environment (Protection) Act 1986 to compute compensation and recover it from the polluters.

Vellore district in Tamil Nadu had about nine hundred tanneries, many of them small units, discharging untreated toxic effluents containing chromium and other chemicals into the river Palar, which was the main source of drinking water for the people of the area. Agricultural land had become unfit for cultivation and the wells had turned saline. The Vellore Citizens Welfare Forum, a non-governmental organisation, filed a writ petition under Article 32 in 1991 as a public interest litigation. The tanneries pleaded that they earned foreign exchange, employed many people and could not afford effluent-treatment plants; the State pointed to the industry's economic importance. Over several years the Court monitored the case, extended time repeatedly for common effluent treatment plants to be set up and finally decided the petition in August 1996.

Kuldip Singh J., for the Court, held that the traditional idea that development and ecology are opposed is no longer acceptable: sustainable development, defined by the Brundtland Report as development that meets the needs of the present without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their own needs, is a balancing concept and has been accepted as part of customary international law. Its essential features, the precautionary principle (the State must anticipate and prevent the causes of environmental degradation; where there are threats of serious or irreversible damage, lack of scientific certainty is no reason for postponing measures; the onus of proof lies on the actor who proposes the activity) and the polluter pays principle (the absolute liability of the polluter extends to compensating the victims and restoring the damaged ecology), are part of the law of the land under Articles 21, 47, 48A and 51A(g) and the environmental statutes, and even as customary international law they are deemed incorporated in domestic law in the absence of any contrary statute. The Court directed the Central Government to constitute an authority under section 3(3) of the Environment (Protection) Act 1986, headed by a retired High Court judge, to assess the loss to the ecology and to individuals, to identify the polluters and recover the compensation, to order the closure of tanneries that did not set up treatment plants, and asked the Madras High Court to constitute a special Green Bench to deal with environmental matters.