On 22 April 2026, the NGT Principal Bench held that the EIA Notification 2006 does not contemplate any 'deemed approval' of an Environmental Clearance, and directed the Tree Officer, MoEF&CC and the Delhi Pollution Control Committee to act within eight weeks against a 61-acre Dwarka project that had felled approximately 2,000 trees without clearance.
On 29 March 2019 a two-judge bench of Justices D.Y. Chandrachud and Hemant Gupta suspended — not outright quashed — the 28 October 2015 environmental clearance for the Mopa greenfield airport in Goa, and remitted the matter to the Expert Appraisal Committee for re-examination within a month, on a record that disclosed non-disclosure in Form-1 of ecologically sensitive markers, an inadequate cumulative-impact assessment, and faunal markers including the South Asian river dolphin that the EAC's recommendation had not engaged. A practitioner's read on the duty of candour, the EIA rigour standard, and the suspension-for-re-examination remedial template.
On 6 July 2011, a three-judge Bench of Chief Justice S.H. Kapadia, Justice Aftab Alam and Justice K.S. Panicker Radhakrishnan — within the T.N. Godavarman writ — dismissed the Shella Action Committee's challenge and upheld the revised environmental clearance, site clearance and Stage-I forest clearance granted to Lafarge for its limestone mine at Nongtrai, East Khasi Hills, Meghalaya. Part II of the judgment used the occasion to issue forward-looking guidelines under section 3(3) of the Environment (Protection) Act, 1986 — directing the appointment of a National Regulator, the expansion of Regional Offices, the constitution of Regional Empowered Committees, GIS-based decision-support databases, the sequencing of forest clearance before environmental clearance, and mandatory public hearing. A digest of the doctrinal architecture, the doctrine of proportionality, the anti-'fait accompli' principle, and the implementation record fifteen years on.
On 16 May 2025, a Supreme Court bench of Justices A.S. Oka and Ujjal Bhuyan struck down the 2017 Notification and the 2021 Office Memorandum that had enabled ex post facto environmental clearances, holding that retrospective approval was foreign to the architecture of Indian environmental regulation. On 18 November 2025, a different bench led by Chief Justice B.R. Gavai — sitting with Justice K. Vinod Chandran and Justice Bhuyan — recalled that judgment by 2:1, with Bhuyan J. now in dissent. A digest of both judgments, the doctrinal disagreement, and what the environmental-clearance architecture now looks like.
The National Green Tribunal's 2026 dispositions have engaged a recurring pattern of environmental concerns — urban waterbody protection, infrastructure encroachment on protected ecosystems, groundwater management, and the institutional architecture for compliance with environmental clearances. A practitioner's read on the year's substantive direction, with attention to the Omaxe City pond rejuvenation directive (Lucknow), the Delhi Ridge architecture, and the NHAI / Delhi waterbody intervention.