Published On: June 07, 2026
Authored By: Priyam Pratik
Faculty of Law,
University of Allahabad
Case Details
Full Case Name: M.K. Ranjitsinh & Ors. v. Union of India & Ors.
Citation: (2024) INSC 280; Writ Petition (Civil) No. 838 of 2019 with Civil Appeal No. 3570 of 2022
Bench: Chief Justice D.Y. Chandrachud, Justice J.B. Pardiwala, and Justice Manoj Misra
Date of Judgment: 21st March 2024
Court: Supreme Court of India
Facts and Issues
The case began with a writ petition filed by M.K. Ranjitsinh, a retired civil servant and wildlife conservationist, under Article 32 of the Constitution seeking urgent intervention from the Supreme Court to protect two critically endangered bird species:
> the Great Indian Bustard (GIB), and
> the Lesser Florican.
Both species inhabit the arid grasslands of Rajasthan and Gujarat and are facing an alarming, and possibly irreversible, population decline.
The GIB is classified as critically endangered by the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN), with its global population reduced to somewhere between 50 and 249 individuals, a figure that reads less like a wildlife statistic and more like a countdown. While several factors such as habitat fragmentation, low reproduction rates, and human encroachment have driven this collapse, one specific threat drew the petitioner’s attention: overhead high-voltage transmission lines. The GIB, owing to its large body and relatively poor frontal vision, was particularly susceptible to fatal collisions with these lines. A 2021 Supreme Court order had already addressed this concern by directing that power lines across approximately 99,000 sq. km. spanning Rajasthan and Gujarat be undergrounded within one year.
The March 2024 judgment arose from the Union of India’s application to modify that earlier order. The government argued that blanket undergrounding was technically infeasible, economically prohibitive, and in direct conflict with India’s international commitments to rapidly scale up renewable energy, particularly solar energy, which required extensive transmission infrastructure across the very same arid regions the GIB calls home.
Two central legal questions came before the Court:
> First, whether the right against the adverse effects of climate change constitutes a fundamental right under Articles 14 and 21 of the Constitution.
> Second, how the Court ought to balance the imperative of protecting an endangered species against the State’s obligations to pursue clean energy and honour its international climate commitments.
Arguments of the Parties
Petitioner’s Contentions
The petitioner’s case rested on an ecological urgency that the numbers themselves made difficult to dispute. With fewer than 250 individuals of the GIB remaining in existence, any further delay in protection measures carried the real risk of extinction. The petitioner argued that the earlier undergrounding order was not merely a policy directive but a constitutional necessity, flowing from Article 21’s guarantee of the right to life, which Indian jurisprudence had long extended to include a clean and healthy environment. To dilute that order, the petitioner contended, would be to subordinate the survival of a species and the ecological balance it represented to considerations of economic convenience.
Respondent’s Contentions
The government highlighted India’s commitment under the Paris Agreement to achieving 500 GW of renewable energy capacity by 2030, with solar energy forming the backbone of that transition.[1] The arid terrain of Rajasthan and Gujarat, the GIB’s natural habitat, was simultaneously prime territory for solar installations, and the overhead transmission lines the petitioner sought to bury were integral to transporting that energy. The government further argued that full undergrounding was technically challenging at scale and prohibitively expensive. It also raised an equity dimension: reliable clean energy directly alleviates energy poverty and health hazards for millions of people, particularly in rural and marginalised communities, and any policy that delayed the energy transition carried its own human cost.
Judgment and Ratio Decidendi
The Court, speaking through the three-judge bench, delivered what is now widely regarded as one of the most consequential constitutional pronouncements in Indian environmental law in recent years.
The bench formally held that the right against the adverse effects of climate change is a fundamental right, grounded in both Article 21 (right to life and personal liberty) and Article 14 (right to equality before the law). The Article 14 reasoning deserves particular attention. The Court observed that climate change does not strike all citizens equally, the farmer whose crop fails in a worsening drought, the coastal community displaced by rising seas, and the urban poor breathing deteriorating air all bear a disproportionate burden relative to their contribution to the problem. The Court held that this asymmetry directly engages the constitutional guarantee of equal protection of the law.
The Court also drew upon the Directive Principle in Article 48A, which places an obligation on the State to protect the natural environment, and Article 51A(g), which imposes a corresponding fundamental duty on every citizen. Read together with Articles 14 and 21, these provisions formed the constitutional foundation for the newly articulated right. This reasoning built directly upon earlier decisions, particularly Virender Gaur v. State of Haryana[2] and M.C. Mehta v. Kamal Nath[3] , which had established that environmental integrity is inseparable from the right to life under Article 21.
The Court also modified its 2021 order, concluding that a blanket prohibition on overhead lines across 99,000 sq. km. was disproportionate and technically untenable. The mandatory undergrounding requirement was restricted to priority GIB areas covering approximately 13,163 sq. km., while an expert committee was constituted to assess, on a case-by-case basis, the feasibility of undergrounding, the deployment of bird diverters, and other conservation measures.[4]
The ratio decidendi of the case is the formal recognition, for the first time in Indian constitutional law, of a justiciable and enforceable right to be free from the adverse effects of climate change, derived from the intersection of Articles 14 and 21 and India’s obligations under international environmental frameworks including the Paris Agreement, the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change, and the National Action Plan on Climate Change.
Critical Analysis
What makes this judgment remarkable is not merely its outcome but the intellectual architecture supporting it. The Court did not treat climate change as a distant bureaucratic concern; it wove it directly into the fabric of fundamental rights, compelling future litigants and courts to engage with it as a constitutional matter rather than a governance preference.
The Article 14 grounding of the climate right is particularly compelling. By framing climate vulnerability as an equality issue, the Court built a bridge between environmental justice and constitutional protection that earlier jurisprudence had not explicitly constructed.
That said, the judgment carries a notable tension that critics have not been slow to identify. The constitutional right it articulates is stated largely in obiter, it was not strictly necessary to resolve the GIB case itself. More significantly, the Court declared a right without fully elaborating the obligations it generates: who bears them, to what extent, and how compliance may be tested. A right without a clearly defined duty structure is always at risk of remaining aspirational. The absence of a dedicated parliamentary statute on climate change in India means there is no legislative framework against which to hold the State accountable under this new right. Until such a framework exists, enforcement will depend heavily on the willingness of future courts to fill the gap.
The decision to modify the 2021 undergrounding order also draws mixed assessments. It may be viewed as a considered, proportionate response to competing constitutional imperatives. Alternatively, it may be seen as a judicial retreat, the same Court that issued a bold conservationist order in 2021 now yielding too readily to government-framed development pressures. The GIB does not have the luxury of awaiting committee reports; extinction does not observe judicial timelines.
On balance, M.K. Ranjitsinh stands as a genuine constitutional landmark. It expands Article 21 into territory no Indian court had charted, makes climate justice justiciable, and opens the door for an entire generation of litigants to bring the climate emergency before the courts as a matter of fundamental rights. Whether future courts honour that opening with the vigour it demands, or settle into cautious deference, remains the more pressing question. What this judgment has achieved, irreversibly, is making that question one the Constitution itself must answer.
References
[1] India’s Nationally Determined Contribution under the Paris Agreement sets a target of achieving 500 GW of non-fossil fuel-based energy capacity by 2030.
[2] Virender Gaur v. State of Haryana, (1995) 2 SCC 577 (India).
[3] M.C. Mehta v. Kamal Nath, (1997) 1 SCC 388 (India).
[4] The expert committee was directed to submit its findings by 31st July 2024.
