In March 2024, a three-judge bench of the Supreme Court of India comprising then Chief Justice of India D Y Chandrachud, J B Pardiwala, and Manoj Misra handed down a judgment that put a bird — the Great Indian Bustard (GIB) — at the centre of a debate about birds, solar panels, and the Constitution. [M K Ranjitsinh v Union of India Writ Petition (Civil) No 838 of 2019, 2024 INSC 280 (SC, 21 March 2024)]. The GIB is critically endangered. The International Union for Conservation of Nature estimates only 50 to 249 mature individuals survive in the wild, mostly in Rajasthan. Due to their poor frontal vision, birds have been known to die when they fly directly into overhead electrical transmission cables. In an attempt to address this, the Supreme Court ordered in 2021 that electricity lines spanning around 99,000 square kilometres of GIB habitat be buried or equipped with bird diverters. That decree was essentially overturned by the 2024 ruling. In its place, the Court appointed a new Expert Committee and, almost as a footnote, made what is arguably the most constitutionally significant move in Indian environmental law in years: it declared that citizens have a right to be free from the adverse effects of climate change, grounded in Articles 14 and 21 of the Constitution [Constitution of India 1950, Arts 14 and 21].
This analysis argues that the judgment is constitutionally ambitious but practically evasive. The climate right is welcome, overdue, in fact. The retreat on GIB protection is not.
Prior decisions, such as M C Mehta v Kamal Nath [MC Mehta v Kamal Nath (2000) 6 SCC 213 (SC)] and Virender Gaur v State of Haryana [Virender Gaur v State of Haryana (1995) 2 SCC 577 (SC)] had already read a right to a clean environment into Article 21. However, no court has specifically held that the negative effects of climate change (rising sea levels, crop failures, heat waves, and drought) violate the Constitution. The court in Ranjitsinh case made it clear that unchecked climate change violates both the right to equality and the right to life.
Climate change is not a future problem. It is already here and already killing people. The Court was right to name it as a rights issue rather than just a policy one. The equality framing is particularly sharp. The judgment points out that a person in Lakshadweep faces a fundamentally different climate future than someone in Madhya Pradesh. Indigenous communities stand to lose not just their homes but their entire way of life. That is an equality issue, and Article 14 should address it.
The Court also rightly noted that India still has no single climate law, despite having signed the Paris Agreement [Paris Agreement (adopted 12 December 2015, entered into force 4 November 2016)] and committed to generating 50 per cent of its electricity from non-fossil fuels by 2030 [UNFCCC, India’s Updated First Nationally Determined Contribution (2021-2030) (submitted August 2022)]. A right without statutory backing is vulnerable. There are no timelines, no measurable targets, and no direction to the government to report back on emissions. The right hangs in the air. Juxtaposing this with the approaches taken by Courts internationally reveals a significant shortfall.
In State of the Netherlands v Urgenda Foundation [State of the Netherlands v Urgenda Foundation HR 20 December 2019, ECLI:NL:HR:2019:2006], the Dutch Supreme Court did not just say the Netherlands had a climate obligation but specified a number: greenhouse gas emissions had to be cut by at least 25 per cent below 1990 levels by the end of 2020. Courts held the government to that target. The right was not decorative; it had teeth. The Indian Court cites Urgenda but, if the right to be free from climate change is real, why is there no direction for the State to file an annual climate action report before the Court? Why no minimum emission reduction target? A declared right with no remedy is closer to a press release than a constitutional guarantee. This is the Urgenda lesson which the Court should have taken into account.
In Sacchi et al v Argentina et al [Sacchi and Others v Argentina and Others UN Committee on the Rights of the Child, Communication No 104/2019, UN Doc CRC/C/88/D/104/2019 (22 September 2021)], 16 children petitioned the UN Committee on the Rights of the Child, arguing that five countries had failed to reduce carbon emissions sufficiently. Though the communication was ruled inadmissible on procedural grounds, the Committee affirmed a key principle: individual states are accountable for their climate actions (or inactions), even if climate change is a global problem. This principle has a direct application in Ranjitsinh case. Building transmission lines that promote solar energy at the expense of a critically endangered species is not a neutral policy option; rather, it is an act with rights ramifications if the state is responsible for the climate damage caused by its own infrastructure. The Sacchi framework could have been used to hold the government to a higher standard of justification before the 2021 protective order was lifted.
In Teitiota v New Zealand [Ioane Teitiota v Chief Executive of the Ministry of Business, Innovation and Employment [2015] NZSC 107], the Supreme Court of New Zealand declined to grant refugee status to a man fleeing rising sea levels in Kiribati, but crucially left the door open for a future case to succeed. The court treated climate displacement as an evolving area of law, not a closed one. A comparable door on the climate right was opened by the Ranjitsinh case, but it appeared to close it again soon by offering no significant remedy. The value of Teitiota is its intellectual honesty: the law is not there yet, but courts must keep moving toward it. Ranjitsinh declares arrival but provides no directions for the journey.
In 2021, the Supreme Court ordered that power transmission lines in GIB habitat must either be put underground or fitted with bird diverters. The 2024 judgment reversed most of that. The Court’s justification was that subterranean cables were too costly, technically challenging in desert regions, and would negatively impact the ecosystem. Blocking transmission lines, it was said, would result in less solar electricity, more coal, and more pollution.
That argument sounds reasonable on the surface. As Down to Earth has reported, this framing simply uses one environmental goal against another. It often sacrifices a dying species in the name of saving the planet. That it is a complex debate requiring a comprehensive approach. The Wildlife Institute of India’s own data showed that the GIB actually lives in concentrated numbers across only 13,663 sq km — the so called ‘priority area’ [Wildlife Institute of India, Status of the Great Indian Bustard (WII Technical Report, 2018); see also para 51, M K Ranjitsinh v Union of India, WP (Civil) No 838 of 2019, 2024 INSC 280 (Supreme Court of India, 21 March 2024)]. Requiring safe cable routing or undergrounding within that comparatively small zone would not have derailed India’s solar energy programme. The issue is that the Court treated this tiny area as though it were the entire 80,000 sq km “potential area,” which is far broader and encompasses areas where GIBs do not typically reside. It was an error in reasoning to apply the same rationale to both zones. The Court also accepted the government’s claim that underground cables simply cannot work in desert conditions, without asking for independent technical evidence or testing that claim in any meaningful way. When a species is down to fewer than 250 individuals, the standard of proof required before one remove its main legal protection should be very high.
Finally, handing the problem to a new Expert Committee sounds responsible. In practice, it is cause for concern. Conservation committees in India, as documented in the judgment’s own record of previous committee functioning, have repeatedly approved projects rather than stopping them. This committee has been given no minimum conservation target, no population floor below which the Court automatically steps back in, and no hard deadline. The GIB has been left waiting on a committee.
The protection should have been maintained in full within the 13,663 sq km priority area, the zone where the birds actually are. In that zone, the presumption should be underground cabling or demonstrably bird-safe alternatives. The burden to prove otherwise should sit with the project developer, not the bird. The Expert Committee could have functioned more freely outside the priority zone in the larger potential area, offering site-specific exclusions, evaluating terrain restrictions, and suggesting alternatives. This preserves the conservation baseline while allowing solar development to proceed across most of the relevant geography.
On the climate right the State should have filed an annual climate action reports before the Court, to be reviewed against India’s Nationally Determined Contribution commitments. If the right means anything, it must generate some form of ongoing accountability. A onetime declaration achieves nothing by itself. The Court should have directed Parliament to consider standalone climate legislation. The judgment itself identifies a statutory vacuum. Courts cannot fill that vacuum alone, but they can name it and call for action, as courts in the Netherlands, Germany, and New Zealand have done.
The Judgment in M K Ranjitsinh v Union of India will be remembered for its visionary step taken in acknowledging of a genuine and important constitutional right against climate change which is a crucial milestone that environmentalists and future courts will build upon. Its practical application reveals a significant gap between legal declaration and immediate enforcement. The Court had everything it needed to act boldly: a dying species, a clear threat, established conservation science, and a growing body of international law demanding enforceable climate accountability. It rightly chose to acknowledge the right (climate) but currently has no mechanism to enforce it as there is no legislation on climate. A bird that lays one egg a season, with fewer than 250 individuals left in the wild, does not have the luxury of waiting for another committee to report back. Neither does a constitutional right that exists only on paper.
Amrita Pankaj Satija is a LL.B.(Hons.) student at Jindal Global Law School, O.P. Jindal Global University
Views expressed are the author’s own and don’t necessarily reflect those of Down To Earth