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M.C. Mehta v. Union of India & Ors.

Writ Petition (Civil) · 2021 INSC 240Decided 9 Apr 2021
Writ Petition (Civil) No. 13029 of 1985
Chief Justice S.A. Bobde · Justice A.S. Bopanna · Justice V. Ramasubramanian

Background

This is not a fresh case but a Record of Proceedings in the decades-old M.C. Mehta vehicular-pollution writ petition (filed in 1985), under which the Supreme Court has for years regulated vehicle registration in Delhi/NCR to curb air pollution, including requiring BS-IV/BS-VI emission compliance. At this particular hearing, the Court took up a batch of pending interlocutory applications (IAs), filed by the North and East Delhi Municipal Corporations, the Delhi Fire Service, the Delhi Cantonment Board, two educational societies, and a few private individuals, each seeking permission to register specific vehicles (garbage trucks, fire tenders, school buses, a road-broomer truck, and a couple of private cars) that needed the Court's clearance under its earlier pollution-control orders.

Decision Breakdown

The Court went through each application one by one. Applications involving vehicles used for public utility purposes (municipal garbage trucks, hook loaders, fire tenders, a cantonment road-broomer, school buses) and shown to be BS-IV/CNG-compliant were allowed, generally by following the Court's own earlier orders (including one dated 18.09.2020) permitting registration of such compliant, public-purpose vehicles. Two applications by private individuals seeking registration of personal vehicles in Uttar Pradesh (at Allahabad and Mathura) were not decided on merits; instead, the Court directed the Amicus Curiae to verify whether those applicants could be heard directly by the Supreme Court or should instead approach the Allahabad High Court, and listed those two applications for further hearing after four weeks. One previously disposed application (regarding Delhi Police vehicle details) was closed after the required compliance affidavit was taken on record.

Lesson Learnt

Even a decades-old "closed-sounding" PIL can remain a live, actively managed case where the Supreme Court continues to issue narrow, practical directions (here, vehicle-by-vehicle emission-compliance clearances) long after the original petition was filed, and such hearings often function as administrative housekeeping rather than fresh adjudication of the underlying legal issue, so not every order carrying a Supreme Court citation decides a new point of law.

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

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