Abstract
Garbage in Indian cities is now as much a legal question as an administrative one. Where municipal bodies have failed to clear, treat or safely dispose of waste, residents have taken their grievances to the constitutional courts through public interest litigation (PIL) and, after 2010, to the National Green Tribunal (NGT). This article studies how these forums have shaped the governance of urban solid waste. Relying on a doctrinal reading of statutes, judgments and tribunal orders, along with official figures and press reports, it shows how a liberal approach to standing, the practice of keeping cases open for continuous supervision, and the Tribunal's authority to levy environmental compensation have together made judges into supervisors of civic performance. Within a span of nine months between September 2022 and May 2023, the Tribunal levied over ₹19,000 crore on Maharashtra, Bihar, Delhi and Uttar Pradesh, yet the failures behind these orders continue. A brief account of the dispute over dumping in Kirari, a cluster of unauthorised colonies in North West Delhi, which is pending before both the Delhi High Court and the Tribunal, brings out what litigation can and cannot do for a single locality. The article contends that adjudicatory bodies have succeeded in fixing standards and exposing default, but they cannot replace the working capacity of municipalities. Judicial directions are most useful when they carry clear deadlines, are monitored on the ground and allow affected residents to be heard.
Keywords: public interest litigation, National Green Tribunal, solid waste management, judicial activism, environmental compensation, Delhi
1. Introduction
In May 2023, the NGT directed the Government of Bihar to deposit ₹4,000 crore after recorng that over 11.7 lakh tonnes of old, untreated waste lay at 26 dump sites across the state (LiveLaw, 2023a). Barely three months before that, by its order of 16 February 2023 in O.A. No. 606 of 2018, the Tribunal had fixed the liability of the Delhi government at ₹3,132 crore on similar grounds. Penalties of this size point to a recurring feature of environmental governance in India. Rules on municipal waste have been on the statute book since 2000, yet it is litigation, more than the agencies charged with the task, that has repeatedly forced their enforcement.
The roots of this pattern go back four decades. From the 1980s onwards, petitions before the Supreme Court and the High Courts began to raise grievances about open drains, choked sewers and uncollected refuse. When Parliament set up the NGT in 2010 to deal exclusively with environmental cases, the Tribunal quickly emerged as the chief national watchdog over the waste rules. Writers on the subject describe this as a judicialisation of environmental governance, a process in which judges go beyond settling disputes and begin to frame, oversee and at times run policy (Gill, 2016; Rajamani, 2007).
.jpeg)
