Environmental and NGT matters

The work

Environmental litigation is documentary. The application that succeeds arrives with consent conditions obtained under the Right to Information Act, measured distances, dated photographs and the regulator's own inspection reports. The one that fails describes the harm eloquently and proves none of it.

When clients come with this

• A unit near your home or land is polluting and the regulator has not acted.
• An industrial unit has been set up without consent, or is breaching its conditions.
• Construction or mining has begun without the clearance it required.
• A water body, drain or common green area is being encroached or filled.
• Directions have been issued against your unit and must be answered.

What this covers

• Applications and appeals before the National Green Tribunal
• Consent to establish and operate, and breach of conditions
• Siting, land-use and clearance violations
• Applications for joint committee inspection and reporting
• Environmental compensation and restoration claims
• Defence of directions issued against industrial units

Documents first, always

Environmental litigation rewards preparation and punishes eloquence. Before anything is filed, the consent to establish and the consent to operate are obtained from the pollution control board, with their conditions, along with inspection reports and monitoring data. In a large proportion of matters the breach is established by the regulator's own file, which is both the cheapest evidence available and the hardest to dispute.

Field material completes the record: distances measured and expressed in metres with coordinates, photographs with dates, and complaints already made with proof of dispatch and the absence of reply. Regulatory inaction is itself a ground, and it is proved by showing what was sent and what was not done about it.

The questions that decide siting cases

Most disputes about industrial units near habitation turn on three things: whether consent was obtained at all, whether the unit complies with the conditions in it, and whether the siting satisfies the distance and land-use norms applicable in that state. The third is where state-specific policy matters, and where general national guidance is not a substitute for the local notification.

Establishing these takes documents rather than argument, which is why an application that arrives complete is often decided far faster than one that arrives urgent.

Compensation and restoration

The Tribunal can order restoration of the environment and compensation assessed on the polluter-pays principle, which is a genuine remedy rather than a declaratory one. Claims are supported by material on the extent and duration of the harm, and by the methodology applied to quantify it — an area where a bare figure without a basis invites reduction or refusal.

The chamber also defends units against such claims, and the same discipline applies in reverse: what the consent permitted, what the data actually shows, and whether the direction followed the hearing the statute requires.