Ecologically damaging saga of retrospective environmental clearances continues: Congress

New Delhi: Congress leader Jairam Ramesh on Sunday slammed the Modi government over the issue of retrospective environmental clearances, and said the "ecologically damaging saga" continues.

The Congress general secretary in-charge communications shared the screenshot of a media report which claimed that the Union Environment Ministry has directed its central and state-level expert bodies to resume processing 'post-facto' environmental clearance (EC) proposals, two months after the Supreme Court permitted it to take such pending, rejected or returned proposals to their logical conclusion in accordance with law.

"The ecologically damaging saga of retrospective environmental clearances continues," Ramesh said on X.


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On May 16, 2025, a two-judge bench of the Supreme Court had categorically rejected such clearances, the former environment minister said, adding that this was a bold verdict and 100 per cent right.

However, on November 18, 2025, a three-judge bench of the Supreme Court led by the Chief Justice himself by a 2-1 majority overturned the earlier Supreme Court decision, Ramesh said and stressed that this was, to put it most mildly, just wrong.

Thereafter, on July 29, 2026, another three-judge bench of the Supreme Court headed by the present Chief Justice unanimously struck down the facility for retrospective environmental clearances provided by the Modi government initially on March 14, 2017 and later reaffirmed in an Office Memorandum on July 7, 2021, he pointed out.

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This was a most welcome development but the verdict also allowed those cases where such approvals had already been granted to be taken forward, Ramesh said.

That exemption diluted the impact of the judgment which essentially condoned the past but shut the door for such violations of law in future, he said.

The Ministry of Environment, Forests and Climate Change has now initiated the implementation of this July 29, 2026 judgment, Ramesh said.

"It needs to be told again and again that ignorance of the law has never been the cause for seeking retrospective environmental approvals. It has always been the standard operating practice to start a project and seek environmental approvals later by presenting a fait accompli - the 'baad mein dekha jayega' approach," Ramesh said.

In any case, ignorance of the law, feigned or otherwise, should never be a cause for exoneration, he added.