M C MEHTA Vs. UNION OF INDIA

JUDGEMENT

(1.) This is an application under Article 32 of the Constitution in the public interest litigation sector. A practising advocate who is the Chairman of the Environment Protection Cell operating at Delhi is the petitioner. This court has been asked to issue directions for closing down of hazardous industries located in the densely populated areas of Delhi and for regulation of air pollution caused by automobiles operating in the area as also the thermal units generating power for the Delhi Electric Supply Undertaking (hereafter referred to as 'desu').

(2.) The Union Territory of Delhi has a total population of about 96 lakhs, out of which the urban area consisting of old Delhi, New Delhi and the Cantonment has a population of around 90 lakhs. By 1947 when the country became independent, Delhi had a population of a little over 5 lakhs. In these little more than two scores of years the population has, thus, multiplied by 19 times. Though it is a spread out city, in some pockets, the density of population is very high and these have become congested.

(3.) The problem of environmental pollution is global in an increasingly small world and concerns all countries irrespective of their size, level of development or ideology. Notwithstanding political division of the world into national units, the oceanic world is an interconnected whole; and winds that blow over the countries are also one. Pollution is capable of moving from continent to continent. If USSR carries out a nuclear test, the fall-out may be carried by the winds to any part of the world and such fall-out of irresponsible disposal of radioactive waste from a remote energy plant in one country may turn out to have greater adverse effect on the neighbouring countries than the danger of a fullfledged war. Informed public mind is already agitated over the polluting effect of the Gulf War and the common concern of the entire homosapien race is obsessed by the apprehension of acid rain, toxic effect on the seas and even on the atmosphere.