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Hospitality Association of Mudumalai v. In Defence of Environment and Animals and Ors.

Civil Appeal · 2020 INSC 597Decided 14 Oct 2020
Civil Appeal Nos. 3438-3439 of 2020
Chief Justice S.A. Bobde · Justice S. Abdul Nazeer · Justice Sanjiv Khanna

Background

To protect a traditional elephant migration route connecting the Eastern and Western Ghats in Tamil Nadu's Nilgiris district, the State Government notified an "Elephant Corridor" in 2010, directing resort owners and private landholders operating within it to vacate. An association of local resort and guesthouse owners, along with other landowners, challenged this notification, arguing their lands fell outside any genuine historic elephant corridor and that the government lacked the power to create such a corridor. The Madras High Court had upheld the notification and ordered the resorts vacated, and the matter eventually reached the Supreme Court after years of follow-up proceedings, including sealing of resorts found to be operating without proper approvals.

Decision Breakdown

The Supreme Court upheld the State Government's power to notify the elephant corridor, holding that protecting forests and wildlife falls squarely within the State's constitutional authority, and that the "Precautionary Principle" obliges the state to act to prevent environmental degradation even amid some scientific disagreement. It found that resorts built with electric and barbed-wire fencing were fragmenting the elephants' habitat and increasing human-elephant conflict, and upheld the general validity of the corridor notification and the High Court's directions. However, recognising genuine factual disputes over the exact boundaries/acreage of the corridor and how the District Collector had implemented sealing orders, the Court appointed a three-member Inquiry Committee (including a former High Court judge and two wildlife experts) to examine and decide these specific individual grievances.

Lesson Learnt

Courts will uphold a government's power to restrict commercial activity on private land to protect wildlife corridors and prevent habitat fragmentation, treating environmental protection as a constitutional duty, but affected individuals with genuine factual disputes about how such orders are implemented against their specific property are still entitled to a fair, independent inquiry into their claims.

Official source (sci.gov.in)View Judgment (PDF)

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