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M/S Sweta Estate Pvt. Ltd. Gurgaon vs Haryana State Pollution Control Board

Civil Appeal · 2023 INSC 999Decided 10 Nov 2023
Civil Appeal No. 2212 of 2020
Abhay S. Oka · Sanjay Karol · Pankaj Mithal as the second judge

Background

Sweta Estate developed a housing colony in Gurgaon and had obtained environmental clearance and a "Consent to Establish" (CTE) from the Haryana Pollution Control Board in 2007, but the Board later declined to renew the CTE and issued a closure/show-cause notice in 2015. The Board's Chairman separately approved prosecuting the company and its directors for operating without valid consent. The company was eventually granted a fresh environmental clearance and an "ex-post facto" CTE in 2017, but that ex-post facto consent carried a condition that the prosecution approved earlier would still proceed. An Appellate Authority quashed the prosecution approval, but the National Green Tribunal (NGT) reversed that and also made observations (beyond what was argued) that the original environmental clearance had lapsed and construction during the gap period was illegal.

Decision Breakdown

The Supreme Court held that the NGT had exceeded the scope of the appeal before it, which was limited only to the legality of the 2017 prosecution-approval order, so its additional findings on whether the environmental clearance had lapsed (paragraph 12 of its judgment) were set aside, with those issues left open for a proper proceeding. On the core prosecution issue, the Court held that the company never challenged the Board's 2012 policy resolution allowing ex-post facto consent with simultaneous prosecution, nor challenged condition no. 4 attached to its 2017 ex-post facto CTE requiring the prosecution to proceed, and having accepted the benefit of the ex-post facto consent, it could not now resist the prosecution condition attached to it. The appeal was therefore only partly allowed: the NGT's overreaching observations were struck, but its confirmation of the prosecution approval stood.

Lesson Learnt

A party cannot accept the benefit of a regulatory approval (like an ex-post facto consent) while resisting a condition attached to that very approval. If you don't challenge a condition when it is imposed, you generally cannot later claim it doesn't bind you.

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

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