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Environment and Disaster Management › Environmental law and institutions

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EIA, clearances and pollution control law

The law that decides whether a project may go ahead: the amendments, public hearings, the pollution control boards, and the Air and Water Acts. Environmental impact assessment is named in the GS3 syllabus.

Foundation note: Environmental impact assessment

Ex post facto environmental clearance

Prelims and Mains

LeadClearance after the fact: the Supreme Court on ex post facto environmental clearanceJuly 2026

Why in news

The Supreme Court on 29 July 2026 struck down the Environment Ministry's office memorandum of July 2021, which had set a standard procedure for clearing projects that began work without environmental clearance.

Background

Environmental clearance is the approval that listed categories of projects must obtain before work begins, under the Environment Impact Assessment (EIA) Notification, 2006, issued under the Environment (Protection) Act, 1986.
The process has four steps: screening, scoping, public consultation and appraisal.
The whole design rests on prior approval: the impact is studied before the damage is done.
An ex post facto clearance is permission granted after a project has been built or begun, which regularises a violation.

What the Court held

An office memorandum is an administrative instruction with no force of law, so it cannot create a procedure of this kind.

Clearance after the fact may still be allowed in exceptional circumstances and in the public interest.
It can be done only through a statutory notification under the Environment (Protection) Act, 1986.

So the Court closed the open ended route and left a narrow one.

Why the instrument matters

A statutory notification is issued under a power given by an Act and is published in the Gazette.
An office memorandum is issued within a ministry and is not published in the Gazette.
Much of environmental regulation is changed through memoranda and circulars, which is why the ruling reaches beyond this one case.

The argument on both sides

For allowing it: closing or demolishing a working plant costs jobs and investment, and may cause its own pollution.
Against: if clearance can be bought later, prior appraisal means little and violation becomes a business decision.
It also defeats the precautionary principle and replaces public consultation with a penalty.

The way forward

Frame any future notification narrowly, with a public interest test stated in it.
Make the penalty exceed the gain from starting without clearance.
Strengthen monitoring after clearance, so that violations are caught early and not regularised late.

Prelims facts

Environmental clearance comes under the EIA Notification, 2006, issued under the Environment (Protection) Act, 1986.
The memorandum struck down was of July 2021.
After the ruling, only a statutory notification can provide for clearance after the fact.

Open the lead on its own page

An ex post facto clearance is permission granted after a project has been built or begun, which regularises a violation. An office memorandum is an administrative instruction without the force of law, while a statutory notification is issued under powers given by an Act and published in the Gazette.

What changed

29 Jul 2026LeadClearance after the fact: the Supreme Court on ex post facto environmental clearance

Data centres: water, cooling and siting

Prelims and Mains

Data centres are cooled by carrying their heat away with water, which makes cooling the demand that meets a local limit first.

Water and efficiency

A 100 MW data centre uses about 2 million litres of water a day; a conversation of 20 to 50 exchanges with a chatbot uses about half a litre.
The Bureau of Indian Standards measures a data centre by Power Usage Effectiveness: total electricity used divided by the electricity its IT equipment uses.
It also measures Carbon Usage Effectiveness, the Cooling Efficiency Ratio and Water Usage Effectiveness.
The building must meet the Energy Conservation Building Code 2017 and the Energy Conservation and Sustainable Building Code 2024.
Direct to chip liquid cooling, adiabatic cooling and immersion cooling bring the ratios down.

Clearance and siting

Environmental clearance is needed only where a data centre forms part of a building project over 20,000 sq m or a township, and it is granted by the State Environment Impact Assessment Authority.
State incentive packages ask for neither a water disclosure nor a grid impact assessment, so the clustering has been towards States already short of water.

What changed

26 Jul 2026
- Residents of Thane protested against a hyperscale data centre needing about 422 MW of continuous power, in a city already short of water by 40 million litres a day.
- In Visakhapatnam and Anakapalli, land allotted for a 1 GW hub drew objections over water, power and nearby forest.
- Maharashtra cut the green energy requirement for such projects from 100 to 51 per cent in June 2026.
The Hindu, 26 Jul 2026: Why are mega data centre projects facing stiff resistance? (opens in a new tab) · Frontline, 7 Aug 2026: A residents' campaign against a hyperscale data centre inside Thane city has turned data centre siting into a mainstream environmental dispute in Maharashtra, with water, power and heat as the contested grounds. (opens in a new tab) · The Indian Express, 23 Jul 2026: Data centre construction is being halted abroad over power, water and local costs, as India expands its own (opens in a new tab)

Background reading: PIB, 14 Sep 2026: Data Centres in India: Infrastructure for the Digital Age (opens in a new tab)

Hydropower in the Himalaya

Prelims and Mains

Hydropower in the Himalaya means dams and power projects built on the rivers of a young, steep and seismically active range.

The hazard

The mountains hold most of the fall a turbine wants and most of the hazard a project cannot survive.
The Himalaya is young, steep and seismically active, so a glacial lake burst or a landslide reaches a project built in the valley below it.

How projects are judged

A cumulative impact assessment weighs every project on a river basin together, rather than clearing each one on its own.
Neither Nepal nor India assesses Himalayan projects basin by basin, so each clearance ignores what the others have already done.
The World Commission on Dams reported in 2000 that a dam's costs fall on the people nearest it while its benefits travel, which is the argument still being had.

What changed

7 Sep 2026
- Nepal's 26 August flood destroyed two hydropower projects and damaged at least thirteen under construction, and the damage was blamed less on the trigger than on where the projects sat.
Frontline, 7 Sep 2026: A warning in the waters (opens in a new tab) · Frontline, 7 Sep 2026: Every disaster also presents an opportunity to learn: Himanshu Thakkar (opens in a new tab)

Background reading: The Indian Express, 30 Aug 2026: Nepal floods: The red flags in dam-building in the Himalayas (opens in a new tab) · The Indian Express, 1 Sep 2026: Express in Nepal: How hydropower firm is planning search for missing staff (opens in a new tab)