A two-judge panel of the Indian Supreme Court reversed a frivolous ruling that unilaterally gave a long-protected piece of forest land in the state of Telangana to a plaintiff who never held title over that land. In a blistering decision, the Court cited a misapplication of the proper standard of review, a finding that “new evidence” was based on improper title inquiries, and a storied history of India’s affirmative, constitutional obligation to conserve forested areas.
The Supreme Court held that the High Court improperly exerted their review jurisdiction by failing to adequately apply the exceptionally high standard to warrant reversal, and set aside their decision. This restored the previous judgment against the plaintiff. As that 2018 decision from the Telangana High Court held that the plaintiff failed to prove title to the land in the first place, the forest remains protected land under Section 15 of the A.P. Forest Act.
The forest area in question here is located just outside of the large Indian city of Hyderabad, soon to be the location of the largest Google office outside of its headquarters in California — this decision will likely have some impact there.
Some corporate actors in India avoid laws protecting against deforestation by felling trees anyway, then compensating for those actions by afforesting elsewhere. Soon after the decision, Telangana Chief Minister A. Revanth Reddy launched an investigation into these kinds of cases — where private actors encroach upon protected forest land. The probe specifically aims toward the “improper inquiry” mentioned in this case. Allegations include possible collusion between encroachers in Kompally and local officials, political interference, report manipulation, and submission of a false affidavit to the Indian Supreme Court.
Since 2014, India has seen consistent attempts to weaken environmental or conservation laws, where executive bodies of power undergo hasty, nonreflective, and unreasoned decision-making to effectuate deregulation. This occurs through passing amendments to India’s key environmental protection laws, creating legal exceptions to the scope of those laws, or emphasizing compensation for environmental violations in place of preventing the harm in the first place.
This decision from the Indian Supreme Court comes from a long line of recent climate litigation cases combating those lapses in the State’s affirmative duty to protect the environment. Justice Sundresh penned many of these decisions, demonstrating a consistent and fervent dedication toward environmental protection and producing an unusually wide breadth of arguments in his decisions. India’s environmental jurisprudence connects the need to mitigate climate change with the “right to life” protected in the Indian Constitution. Justice Sundresh, in stark terms, directly criticizes the Telangana High Court and other executive authorities for willfully ignoring their duties to protect that right to life. He attacks the process of utilizing executive orders that arbitrarily change policies surrounding natural resources and aim to frustrate and delay integral legislation on environmental protection. The decision also strikes at the heart of those encroachment practices now subject to ministerial investigation.
More specifically to this case, the forested area in Kompally was saved by the strict standards by which courts must abide when exerting review jurisdiction. Any reversal on such jurisdiction requires evidence of “unimpeachable quality” — the improper (and allegedly corrupt) inquiry here was not, in fact, unimpeachable. That high standard of proof indicates that future public interest litigation in India will require a focus on establishing strong findings of fact at the lower court.
For their contributions, special thanks to ESCR-Net member: the Program on Human Rights and the Global Economy (PHRGE) at Northeastern University
