Supreme Court issues notice to Centre, Madhya Pradesh on plea against 237 ‘illegal' environmental clearances by SEIAA member-secretary
A three-judge Bench headed by the Chief Justice of India B.R. Gavai issued notice to the Union Government, the State, the SEIAA Chairman, and the member-secretary, Principal Secretary of the State Environment Department.
The petitioner, Vijay Kumar Das, a Hindi newspaper publisher, has arraigned the Central Bureau of Investigation too as a respondent. The notices are returnable in two weeks.
Mr. Das, represented by senior advocate Vivek Tankha and advocate Sumeer Sodhi, said the clearances were given unilaterally, without convening the mandatory SEIAA meetings and in breach of the Environment (Protection) Act, 1986; the Environment (Protection) Rules, 1986; and the Environmental Impact Assessment Notification, 2006.
The petition alleged that the clearances were the result of a deliberate strategy to bypass the collective decision-making process mandated by the law, and exploited the 'deemed approval' provisions after letting statutory periods lapse.
It said that there was no properly constituted SEIAA or SEAC (State Expert Appraisal Committee) between June 11, 2024, to January 6, 2025. A new SEIAA was constituted on January 7 this year.
The violations, it was alleged, began from May 23 this year when the first environmental clearance was issued unilaterally by the member-secretary without any SEIAA meeting. The petition said multiple clearances were issued in just one day, May 24, demonstrating the premeditated nature of the alleged violations.
'Despite the chairman of SEIAA writing almost 48 representations between April-June 2025 to prevent these illegal actions, addressed to various authorities including the Member Secretary, Principal Secretary, Chief Secretary, and Union of India, the systematic violations continued unabated. The authorities have turned a blind eye to these representations, which demonstrates not merely administrative negligence but willfull and deliberate facilitation of environmental crimes at the highest levels of the State government,' the petition said.
It said the case was a 'classic example' of Secretaries and senior officials abusing their positions for ulterior motives, including personal gains, by facilitating illegal environmental clearances for mining lobbies and industrial interests.
'The member-secretary acted in active collusion with the principal secretary, department of environment, and other public officials, orchestrating a prolonged non-convening of SEIAA meetings with the calculated intention of allowing the statutory period for appraisal to lapse,' the petition argued.
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