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Talli Gram Panchayat vs. Union of India & Ors.

Civil Appeal · 2022 INSC 692Decided 11 Jul 2022
Civil Appeal Nos. 383-384 of 2022
Dr. Dhananjaya Y. Chandrachud · A.S. Bopanna

Background

In 2017, the Ministry of Environment granted an environmental clearance for limestone mining near Talli and Bambor villages in Gujarat. The Gram Panchayat challenged the clearance before the National Green Tribunal (NGT), but its appeal was delayed and the application for condonation of delay was dismissed by a "single-member" bench of the NGT on 29 January 2018. The Panchayat later sought to recall that order, arguing the single-member bench itself was invalid, but the NGT rejected this too in 2021, leading to the present appeal to the Supreme Court.

Decision Breakdown

The Supreme Court found that the NGT Act requires every bench to have both a judicial and an expert member, so a single-member bench was not validly constituted. Crucially, this had already been flagged to the Supreme Court itself on 11 January 2018, when the Attorney General assured the Court that the relevant rule would be corrected, and on 31 January 2018 the Court had directed that no single-member benches be constituted "in the meantime." Since the impugned order was passed on 29 January 2018, after the assurance but two days before the formal order, the Court held that the single member should not have proceeded to decide the matter, and that his order was vitiated by lack of jurisdiction. The Court set aside both the NGT's 2021 order and the original 2018 order, and restored the original appeal for fresh disposal before a properly constituted NGT bench, without expressing any view on the merits.

Lesson Learnt

A tribunal or bench that is not properly and legally constituted cannot validly decide a case, even if the irregularity emerges only from surrounding context (such as an assurance given to a higher court) rather than an explicit order: procedural correctness in constituting adjudicating bodies is treated as fundamental, not a mere technicality.

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

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