Development not absolute; cannot trade health for growth: Supreme Court

The Supreme Court has ruled that development is not an absolute goal and that the right to a clean environment, part of the right to life, cannot be traded off against economic benefits, TOI reported.

Declining permission for change of land use for a cement factory in Sangrur, Punjab, located close to farms and a school, a bench of Justices Vikram Nath and Sandeep Mehta also quashed the Central Pollution Control Board’s revised industrial sector categorisation issued in January 2025.

In the revised norms, a “stand-alone grinding unit without captive power plant” was moved from the ‘red’ to the ‘orange’ category, allowing such units to be set up near inhabited areas.


Writing the judgment, Justice Nath said, “Economic development and industrial growth are legitimate and important objectives... However, in a constitutional framework founded on rule of law, development isn't an abstract or absolute goal. It's conditioned by the non-derogable obligation to protect life, health and environmental integrity.”

“Development that undermines these foundational values ceases to be constitutionally permissible development. When developmental activity poses a credible risk to human health or environmental safety, regulatory frameworks must err on the side of protection,” he said.

The court said the Constitution does not permit a trade-off where civilian life and health are exposed to foreseeable harm on the assumption that economic benefit or industrial facilitation justifies such exposure.

“Articles 14 and 21 of the Constitution of India do not tolerate a regulatory calculus that treats environmental safety as negotiable,” it said.

Faulting the reclassification of industries and dilution of location restrictions without considering proximity to habitation and environmental impact, Justices Nath and Mehta said, “Sector-level reclassification, divorced from exposure realities and local sensitivities, would become a ready instrument to justify siting of polluting activities near habitations, schools, and other sensitive receptors.”

“Such an approach would not remain confined to the present case. It would operate as a precedent, enabling progressive erosion of preventive safeguards across regions, with cumulative and irreversible consequences. The law does not permit environmental protection to be weakened incrementally until harm becomes inevitable,” the bench said.

The court observed that environmental degradation is largely irreversible. “A regulatory framework that allows risk to materialise first and seeks to address consequences later is fundamentally incompatible with constitutional environmental jurisprudence,” it said.

It also noted that courts are generally slow to interfere with developmental and economic activities of the state.

With inputs from TOI