Supreme Court: No Need to Publish Full Environmental Clearance in Newspapers

The Supreme Court has clarified that project developers are not required to publish the entire Environmental Clearance (EC) document in a local newspaper. Publishing only the fact that the EC has been granted, along with the key conditions and safeguards, is enough to meet the legal requirement.

This observation was made by a Bench of Justices PS Narasimha and Atul S Chandurkar while hearing an appeal filed by the Talli Gram Panchayat. The Panchayat had challenged the EC granted on 5 January 2017 to Ultratech Cement for a limestone mining project spread across more than 193 hectares in the villages of Talli and Bambor in Gujarat.

The National Green Tribunal (NGT) had dismissed the Panchayat’s appeal as time-barred. The appeal was filed on 19 April 2017—beyond the maximum permissible period of 90 days (30 days + up to 60 days extension). The Panchayat argued before the Supreme Court that they came to know about the EC only on 14 February 2017 through an RTI reply, and therefore the limitation should be counted from that date. They also claimed that the EC was not fully published in the local newspaper as required under Clause 10 of the Environment Impact Assessment (EIA) Notification, 2006.

Rejecting these arguments, the Supreme Court upheld the NGT’s view in V. Sundar Proprietor Chemicals, India v. Union of India (2015), which held that newspapers need not carry the complete EC document. Only the essential details must be published, and this is sufficient compliance.

The Court concluded that the limitation period will start from the first date on which the EC becomes publicly accessible, whether on the Ministry’s website, through a newspaper announcement, or via communication from an authorised official.