A collective of citizens, environmentalists, legal experts and civil society organisations from across India has demanded that the Supreme Court withdraw oral remarks made by the Chief Justice of India (CJI) during the Pipavav Port hearing on May 11, 2026. The group aims to ensure these comments are not misinterpreted as questioning the legitimacy of genuine environmental public-interest litigation, or the constitutional right of citizens and affected communities to demand the enforcement of environmental laws.

In an open letter to the CJI, the coalition outlined urgent environmental concerns and the right of citizens to question irregularities in projects negatively impacting natural ecosystems, their livelihoods and right to life.

The letter has been vetted by senior lawyers and has garnered endorsements from more than 600 citizens, a member of the coalition told Citizen Matters. Grassroots activists and environmentalists from Karnataka, Odisha, Uttarakhand, Haryana, and Rajasthan addressed media persons in Delhi on Friday to amplify these concerns and release the letter.

Joseph Hoover, United Conservation Movement (working for protection of Western Ghats), Prafulla Samantara, National Convenor, Lok Shakti Abhiyan (senior environmentalist from Odisha), Atul Sati, Convenor, Joshimath Bachao Sangharsh Samiti, Uttarakhand, Lokesh Bhiwani, Founder, Stand With Nature and Member, Aravalli Virasat Jan Abhiyan from Haryana, Prabhu Dayal, Member, Jodhpura Sangharsh Samiti, Kotputli-Behror district, Rajasthan and Tannuja Chauhan, environmentalist, People for Aravallis, Save Dwarka Forest, Delhi-NCR addressed the media.  

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Read more: Vote for clean air, water security and nature conservation: Environment and civil society groups

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Excerpts from the letter:

To,
The Chief Justice of India,
Hon’ble Supreme Court,
New Delhi 110 001.
22nd May 2026

Subject: Environmental Laws – Citizens’ True “Right to Life”.

Respected Sir,
We write this letter with utmost respect and regard for the Hon’ble Supreme Court of India, and for its long and distinguished contribution towards the development of India’s environmental jurisprudence. We write equally with frank concern and a measure of alarm regarding the oral remarks made in open court on 11 May 2026 during the hearing of a matter relating to the expansion of Pipavav Port in Gujarat. As captured in the publicly available court proceedings video and reported in the media, you are quoted as having observed, among other things:

• “In this country, the kind of litigations that are filed only to stall all development projects, that is the whole problem”
• “You show us a single project in this country where these alleged environmentalists, activists, they say we welcome this project…”
• “You also state you went to NGT and unfortunately that create lot of doubts on bona fide. You don’t go to any expert agency, you don’t go to any authority pointing out that look here, this is your Report submitted. I am an expert, I find that these are the deficiencies in your Report, if at all you are expert. You are some RTI activist, you are so and so activist, an environmentalist, you have so many degrees. I’m RTI activist, I’m environmentalist, I’m social activist, I’m so and so activist. Jahan daav lage wahin?”

We find the aforementioned comments highly objectionable and disturbing. These comments were not made in the context of the case being heard by the Court, but on the overall right of citizens to protect the environment and question illegal decisions and irregularities.

These remarks have caused deep concern and anguish among us citizens, including small and marginal farmers, cattle herders, fisherfolk, forest dwellers, adivasis, rural and urban communities adversely impacted by mining & other industrial and commercial projects, lawyers, researchers, students, ecologists, rewilders, along with conservationists, foresters, scientists, and environmental practitioners – people who work, often at personal cost, at the intersection of ecology, livelihoods, environment and the law.

With utmost respect, it must be stated plainly: such framing is factually inaccurate, Constitutionally troubling, and potentially dangerous. It risks portraying citizens who seek lawful scrutiny of environmental decision-making as a suspect constituency, rather than as participants in a constitutional democracy performing both a right and a duty.

It also risks producing a chilling effect well beyond this single case. The National Green Tribunal, High Courts, appraisal bodies, and administrators take their cues from the Supreme Court.

“Environmental litigation stalling development” is not backed by data

The suggestion that environmental litigation routinely paralyses development is directly contradicted by available evidence. The Indian Express analysed over 100,000 National Green Tribunal (NGT) orders between 2020 and 2025, and found that where environmental and forest clearances were challenged, the Tribunal upheld the developer’s position in approximately four out of every five appeals.

The NGT — the very institution established to provide meaningful environmental adjudication — upholds challenged clearances in 80% of cases. This is not the profile of a system being captured by so-called ‘obstructionists’.

The claim that “everything gets dragged to court” also requires factual context. Environmental
PILs constitute a small fraction of the total Supreme Court docket. Besides, the fact remains that of the approximately 12,500 Environment, Forest, Wildlife, and CRZ clearances that are now granted annually (a record high reached in 2022), only a minuscule fraction faces legal scrutiny. Data from 2020 to 2025 reveals that, on average, fewer than 70 of these approvals are legally challenged by citizens or activists before the NGT each year.

The vast majority of projects in India proceed without judicial challenge. Those that are  challenged tend to be projects where procedural requirements have genuinely not been met,  where environmental impact assessments have been rushed or incomplete, or where the  voices of affected communities were not meaningfully heard. Characterising this small subset  of contested clearances as evidence of a generalised anti-development lobby inverts the  evidential burden.  

We wish to point out that socially and ecologically destructive projects which have  been approved in violation of the law cannot be termed as ‘developmental projects’ in  the truest sense. 

Full compliance with environmental laws is the sine qua non for an activity to be termed as  ‘sustainable development’. Litigants often articulate their livelihood concerns through  Statutory Appeals before the NGT since the Parliament has conferred the statutory right  on citizens of the country. Once rights have been conferred, it is inappropriate for the  Supreme Court to vilify citizens who exercise the rights conferred by the Parliament.   

India’s environmental status

Currently, India is experiencing rapid environmental degradation at an unprecedented and monumental scale, which is risking the lives of all, but especially of the most  disadvantaged. The statistics below illustrate the scale of environmental deterioration that  citizens are being asked to accept without robust legal recourse. 

• Extreme heat: According to a 2025 study by the Council on Energy, Environment and  Water (CEEW), 57% of Indian districts — home to 76% of the population – are now at  ‘high to very high’ risk of extreme heat. The economic fallout is already massive:  the latest Lancet Countdown Report reveals that in 2024 alone, India lost a  record 247 billion potential labour hours to heat exposure (a 124% increase from  the 1990s), resulting in an estimated income loss of USD 194 billion. During one  particular week of April this year, all 50 of the world’s hottest cities were in India, according to real-time data maintained by AQI, and as reported by CNN.  
• Air pollution: In 2025, India ranked a dismal 6^th worst globally (of 143 countries  assessed) for air pollution levels in terms of population-weighted PM 2.5  concentrations, with 66 of the 100 most polluted cities in the world being in India.  New Delhi continues to hold the dubious distinction of being the world’s most polluted  capital city. In 2023, PM 2.5 concentrations in Delhi averaged 88.4 μg/m³, against a  national standard of 40 μg/m³ and nearly 18 times the current WHO guideline of 5  μg/m³. According to the Air Quality Life Index Annual Update Report (2025) based on air pollution data of 2023, air pollution alone is estimated to reduce the average  life expectancy of Indians by 3.5 years, and by as much as 8.2 years for residents of Delhi (and NCR)¹⁰. 
• Water pollution: The Central Pollution Control Board (CPCB) in 2025 identified 296  polluted river stretches in 271 rivers (of 623 rivers assessed) across 32 States & Union  Territories. Millions fall ill each year from waterborne diseases. Climate-related extremes such as intense rainfall, flooding, and water contamination are increasing the risk, duration, and geographic spread of waterborne diseases – including diarrhoeal infections, cholera, typhoid, and hepatitis A/E – thereby placing growing pressure on public health systems in India. Untreated industrial wastewater continues to contaminate almost all major rivers of the country. Several tributaries and smaller stretches face the real prospect of functional collapse within the coming decades. 
  
  [Even the Holy Ganga has not been spared. In January 2025, as 660 million pilgrims gathered at Prayagraj for the Mahakumbh, the CPCB submitted a Report to the NGT  – not publicly advertised – showing that faecal coliform levels at the Triveni Sangam had reached 49,000 most probable number (MPN) per 100 ml against a safe bathing threshold of 2,500. By 04 February, levels near Shastri Bridge registered 11,000.  This is the river whose cleanliness the Government has described as a matter of national priority.] 
• Water stress: NITI Aayog’s Composite Water Management Index Report (2019)  states that about two lakh people in India die every year due to inadequate water,  sanitation and hygiene, while approximately 820 million Indians in twelve river  basins across the country are living with water scarcity¹⁷. Continued lack of  effective interventions can lead to an unrelenting water crisis. While the Jal Jeevan  Mission has, since then, improved access, the underlying resource scarcity persists.  The World Resources Institute’s (WRI) Aqueduct Water Risk Atlas continues to classify  India as an ‘extremely high’ water-stressed country. This trajectory is exacerbated by the loss of forest cover, negatively impacting the natural watershed recharge needed  to replenish depleted aquifers. 
• Forest loss: Global Forest Watch data shows that from 2002 to 2024, India lost  approximately 348,000 hectares (ha) of humid primary forest, representing 5.4%  of its total humid primary forest cover. This accounted for roughly 15% of India’s total  tree cover loss during that period, with significant losses occurring in the northeastern  states. This loss of mature, biodiversity-rich ecosystems is irreplaceable when  compared to the tree cover gain due to regeneration and afforestation efforts consisting  mostly of monoculture or tree species-poor plantations. This directly undermines the  water security of a country whose major rivers originate in the Himalayas and the  Western Ghats.
  
• Linear intrusions and human-wildlife conflict: A peer-reviewed study published in  the journal Land Use Policy in 2020 found that the density of linear intrusions like  roads, powerlines, railway tracks and canals within India’s Protected Areas are now  comparable to those outside them with nearly 70% of Protected Areas traversed by such infrastructure. Habitat fragmentation is creating new human-wildlife conflict hotspots in states like  Chhattisgarh and Jharkhand, where mining and construction of infrastructure disrupt  and fragment corridors, forcing elephants into human-dominated farmlands.
• Waste Mismanagement and the Waste-to-Energy (WTE) False Solution: India  generates approximately 62 million tonnes of municipal solid waste annually, yet  rather than fully prioritising and investing in the proven hierarchy of reduce, reuse, and  recycle – and in the country’s vast, ecologically efficient informal waste picker economy  – successive regulations, including the most recent Solid Waste Management (SWM)  Rules, 2026, have formally endorsed Waste-to-Energy (WtE) incineration through  mechanisms such as mandatory Refuse Derived Fuel (RDF) usage. The  environmental and economic record of these plants is underwhelming: operating costs  run to ₹6-8 per kWh against ₹2-3 for solar or wind; Indian municipal waste’s high  moisture content (40-50%) makes incineration technically inefficient in most cases; and more than half of the WtE facilities historically established have shut down. Moreover, Indian facilities face persistent challenges in regularly monitoring or  reporting dioxin, furan, or heavy metal emissions – a serious, unaddressed public health risk. Furthermore, according to CPCB’s own submission to the NGT in 2025  on the status of 21 operational WtEs in India, several were found to be non-compliant  with the emission parameters of the SWM Rules.  
• Climate Thresholds: Atmospheric carbon dioxide concentration (2025 annual  average) now stands at approximately 426 parts per million (ppm) – 52% above the  pre-industrial average. The World Meteorological Organization (WMO) confirms that  the consolidated period 2023-25 was the hottest in recorded history, and  approximately 1.48°C warmer than the pre-industrial baseline, bringing the global  average dangerously close to the 1.5°C threshold established by the Paris Agreement.  As per Germanwatch’s Climate Risk Index Report (2026), India is the 9^th most  climate-vulnerable nation on Earth. Hence, protecting our remaining carbon  sinks and ecological lifelines is not an ideological position, but a matter of  national security. 
  
  These above statistics matter because environmental degradation is not an abstract concern.  It directly affects public health, labour productivity, childhood development, and the daily  conditions of life and livelihoods, especially of the poorest of the poor and adivasis across  India. 
  
  The judiciary is, for us citizens in rural and urban areas, the institution of last resort. To suggest that citizens “drag cases to court” out of reflexive hostility to ‘progress’ is to  fundamentally misread what drives environmental litigation in India.

India’s biogeographic regions are severly threatened

India’s major biogeographic regions are not merely repositories of biodiversity. They are the  functional infrastructure upon which its water, food, and climate systems depend. Their  degradation is not a conservation concern peripheral to development – it is a threat to  development itself. 

• The Aravallis: This ancient mountain range is a critical groundwater recharge zone  for North-West India. A 2018 Report of the Supreme Court-appointed Central  Empowered Committee (CEC) found that 25% of the Aravalli range had been lost  to illegal mining in Rajasthan since 1967-68, with over 10,300 hectares affected  outside lease boundaries. Groundwater levels have fallen to 1,500-2,000 feet in mining  areas. Rivers and streams that once flowed from the hills have dried up or been  severely contaminated, negatively impacting water availability for drinking and irrigation in the region. 
• The Western Ghats: The Western Ghats are the “water tower” of peninsular India, sustaining perennial rivers that ensure water and food security for hundreds of millions.  Despite their ecological criticality and the economic value of their ecosystem services,  they face mounting pressure from poorly-planned infrastructure expansion, quarrying, and plantation agriculture. 
• The Himalayas: The scale and frequency of Himalayan disasters in the monsoon  season of 2025 was such that the Supreme Court itself proclaimed: “If things proceed  the way they are as on date, then the day is not far when the entire state of Himachal  Pradesh may vanish into thin air.” The Court’s own words stand as a powerful rebuke  to any suggestion that judicial scrutiny of development in the Himalayas, or that of any of ecologically sensitive regions across India, is anti-national or anti-development.

Development at the cost of livelihood security and ecological wisdom is costing Indians dearly

We take strong objection to the casual deployment of the label ‘environmentalist’ as a term of  delegitimisation. ‘Environmentalist’ has a positive connotation: as citizens who are  fulfilling their duty under Article 51 (A)(g). In fact, the Constitution envisages every  citizen (including judges) to be a ‘guardian of the environment’.In this sense, we are not  acting outside the Constitutional framework, but squarely within it and being good law-abiding  citizens. In many instances, litigation is the “last resort” precisely because  environmental planning is not yet integrated into the core of project design in India.  

Constitutional and legal framework for environmental scrutiny

Citizens and affected communities who approach the NGT and the Supreme Court are,  therefore, not subverting these institutions, but are merely using them for their  intended purpose. They are trying to hold the State to the standards it has set for itself,  and no more. To characterise this as a “problem” is to perhaps characterise  Constitutional democracy itself as a problem. 

It is precisely because the Supreme Court has stood as a Constitutional sentinel in  environmental matters that the remarks of 11 May 2026 cause alarm. The institutional memory  of this Court’s own environmental jurisprudence is what gives its rulings moral authority. To  see the Chief Justice, therefore, characterise environmental petitioners and others like  RTI and social activists as presumptively suspect is, for many of us, disorienting,  dispiriting, and demands a frank and respectful response. 

Solutions-structural reforms that are needed

You seemingly suggested that environmentalists must come with solutions too. With respect,  solutions are primarily the domain of the State, which alone has the mandate, resources, and  institutional authority to implement them. That said, concerned citizens, scientists, and civil  society organisations, including many of the signatories, have for decades proposed  approaches, many already embedded in law and policy, whose implementation has been  consistently inadequate. 

We set out these approaches not as novel prescriptions but as a reminder of what the  State has already committed to and not delivered: 

• Protected Areas in India need the “Principle of Avoidance” to ensure that human wildlife conflicts are not created or exacerbated due to large projects with significant negative ecosystem impacts, that are not primarily meant for local communities. 
• Bioregions like the Aravallis, the Western Ghats, the Himalayas and the North East  need to be protected from predatory development that is threatening the lives,  livelihoods, and cultures of the local indigenous peoples who are living in and  dependent on these bioregions for centuries. 
• Undertake environmental planning at the earliest stage of project conception,  before alignments, sites, and capacities harden into fait accomplis. 
• Apply the mitigation hierarchy honestly: avoidance first, then minimisation,  restoration, and only lastly compensation or offsetting. 
• Require rigorous Cumulative Impact Assessments under the Strategic  Environmental Assessment (SEA) Framework, not merely project-wise  compartmentalised studies, especially in already stressed coasts, river basins, forests,  and ecological/ wildlife corridors. 
• Ensure that EIAs, biodiversity assessments, hydrological analyses, and social-impact  appraisals are independent, transparent, and open to meaningful public scrutiny.  The EIAs are, at present, a product of project proponent funded studies with “conflict  of interest” embedded instead of acting as an independent scrutiny of the proposed  development plan. EIA reports are often used to flout the very law that the EIA process  is meant to uphold, with the protection of the environment getting neglected. 
• Strengthen monitoring and post-clearance compliance, because weak compliance  can turn nominal safeguards into paper assurances. 
• Treat local communities not as impediments but as knowledge-holders and rights bearing participants in environmental decision-making. 

India is a  signatory to the Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD) and committed, through the  Kunming-Montreal Global Biodiversity Framework (2022), to bring 30% of its land and  oceans within stricter legal protection by 2030. 

With only 5.32% of its geographical area under the Protected Area network currently, with the majority themselves subject to linear intrusion densities and other developmental pressures  mentioned above, India faces a significant challenge in meeting its own commitments. 

Environmental litigation that holds the line against further erosion of this already  inadequate Protected Area network, is not an obstacle to national progress, but furthers  a contribution to India’s credibility before the international community. 

Conclusiosn and citizens’ demands

A 2021 World Bank Report, ‘The Economic Case for Nature’, warned that the global economy  could face annual losses of USD 2.7 trillion by 2030 if critical ecological tipping points are crossed. More recently, the 2025 Global Tipping Points Report, a landmark multi-author  scientific assessment, warned that several planetary thresholds are now within reach, and that  once crossed, their consequences cannot be undone⁴³. 

The question is no longer whether ecological destabilisation will affect economies and  societies. It is how rapidly, how severely, and whether the institutions we have built to prevent  it will hold. The ecological conditions within which India’s development decisions are made  today are categorically different from those of even two decades ago. Environmental  protection is not a ‘drag’ on growth. 

It is rather the precondition for growth that is durable, equitable, and survivable by future generations. Reconciling India’s development aspirations and its ecological  imperatives demands that large infrastructure projects be planned, appraised, and approved  with rigour, so that the country’s remaining natural ecosystems and the communities that  directly depend on them are not treated as ‘acceptable collateral’. 

A responsible democracy does not ask citizens to choose between development and  the environment. It asks whether development has been planned lawfully, appraised  honestly, and designed intelligently enough to holistically protect and benefit all life,  livelihoods, and ecological security. When it has not been, it provides citizens with legal  remedies. The Supreme Court of India exists, in part, to ensure those remedies are available  and effective. 

For approximately 300 million people who are dependent on forests for their livelihood  (as of 2019), apart from hundreds of millions dependent on climate-sensitive  agriculture, clean water, and coastal fisheries, the Supreme Court is the “arbiter of last  resort”. We cannot afford for it to signal, even informally, that our concerns are presumptively “obstructionist”.  

We urge this Hon’ble Court to view environmental litigation not as a hurdle to be cleared, but  as a procedural safeguard that ensures India’s progress does not result in the functional  collapse of its life-support systems. 

The need of the hour is not less environmental scrutiny, but better planning, better  appraisal, better science-policy integration, better compliance, greater transparency,  and a judicial climate that reassures citizens that lawful environmental concern remains  integral to Indian democracy and to the Fundamental “Right to Life” itself. 

In light of the foregoing, we urge and demand the following:

1. We demand that the Hon’ble Supreme Court withdraws the oral remarks made by the  Chief Justice of India during the Pipavav Port hearing on 11 May 2026, so that they  are not understood as casting doubt on the legitimacy of bona fide environmental  public-interest litigation or on the Constitutional role of affected communities and  citizens in seeking enforcement of environmental law. To that effect, we urge that a  public statement be issued that what was said on 11^th May should not be taken as the  opinion of the Court on environmental litigation and litigants.  

2. We urgethat oral observations from the Bench in matters involving environmental  scrutiny be made with awareness of their systemic effect — on litigants, on subordinate  tribunals, and on the Constitutional culture of accountability that PILs exist to protect.  

3. We demand that the Hon’ble Supreme Court and all other courts in India treat local  communities and citizens approaching the judiciary in public interest litigation matters  as rights-bearing participants in environmental decision-making rather than as obstacles to it. 

4. We urge the Hon’ble Supreme Court to continue to stand firm in the decades of legacy  of environmental jurisprudence it has itself built, and to signal clearly that in the world’s  largest democracy, the rule of environmental law is a pillar of – and not barrier to – development that is Constitutionally and legally sound, widely inclusive, and  ecologically sustainable. 

It is with this deep faith in the institution of the Supreme Court, and its indispensable role as  the guardian of the Constitution and the Fundamental Right to Life, that we submit this letter.  We sincerely hope that our shared concerns regarding the integrity of environmental  protection and the Constitutional rights of citizens will be acknowledged and addressed. 

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