On 30 December 1996 — the penultimate working day before his retirement — Justice Kuldip Singh, sitting with Justice Faizan Uddin, delivered the Taj Trapezium judgment: 292 enumerated industries within a 10,400 square kilometre polygon around the Taj Mahal were directed to switch to natural gas or relocate outside the Zone, with labour-protective relief for workers in relocated units. A digest of how the Bench operationalised the *Vellore* principles, why it created a monument-centric zoning template, and how the continuing-mandamus device powered later orders from CNG-Delhi to subsequent TTZ rulings.
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.
On 28 August 1996, a three-judge Bench led by Justice Kuldip Singh held that 'sustainable development', the 'precautionary principle' and the 'polluter pays' principle are part of the law of the land — and ordered the discharge of pollution fees by tanneries in Tamil Nadu that had contaminated the River Palar and rendered 35,000 hectares of agricultural land unfit for cultivation. The judgment, together with *M.C. Mehta (Oleum Gas Leak)*, supplies the foundational architecture of Indian environmental law. A digest of the doctrines, the directions, and what they require.