CJI Surya Kant pitches for energy justice as moral architecture for India’s growth
Chief Justice of India (CJI) Surya Kant on Saturday emphasised that the only defensible development is one that is environmentally responsible and stressed that India’s growth must be aligned with ecological sustainability and the principles of energy justice.
He said that the country must be prepared and equipped to undertake a delicate balancing exercise between “our pursuit of development and our fidelity to a greener future”. Addressing the International Conference on Sustainable Energy: An agenda for India @2047, he stressed that India’s vision for 2047 must be grounded in justice. “The way I see it, must synchronise economic growth with ecological sensibility. This is because, as a nation, we are still very much on our development journey, and therefore we cannot afford to treat environmental protection and economic progress as a binary choice.”
Stressing that energy justice is not an “alien concept” imported from the developed world, the Chief Justice of India said, “It is the moral architecture that allows a rising nation such as ours to grow without compromising what belongs to every citizen: clean air, clean water, and a livable future.”
Highlighting the constitutional basis for this balance, the CJI said both development and environmental protection are embedded within Article 21, and “the genius of our constitutional framework lies in its insistence that development and environmental protection must proceed together.” He said that he has been emphasising with increasing conviction that the only defensible development is one that is environmentally responsible. Courts cannot afford to look through a narrow keyhole that treats every project as suspect, but nor can they adopt a complacent approach that treats environmental safeguards as negotiable.
“Our task is to move from a purely reactive model to one that integrates environmental protection into the very design of development — not as an afterthought, but as a foundation,” Justice Kant said.
The CJI pointed to the doctrine of continuing mandamus as a key procedural innovation enabling courts to monitor environmental compliance over time, citing the MC Mehta cases as examples of sustained judicial intervention in issues ranging from air pollution and river cleaning to forest and wildlife protection.
