19 hours ago
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The Supreme Court connected Tuesday (May 26, 2026) agreed to analyse a situation to the law validity of the explanation of ‘wetlands’ successful the Wetlands (Conservation and Management) Rules, 2017, for arbitrarily excluding astir human-made, artificial, and historically developed wetlands from biology extortion and diluting accountability done decentralised oversight.
A Bench headed by Chief Justice of India Surya Kant issued a ceremonial announcement to the Union Government connected a petition filed jointly by a radical of biology activists and professionals led by Ravindra Sinha that the explanation of ‘wetlands’ successful Rule 2(g) of the 2017 law was inconsistent with India’s binding planetary obligations nether the Ramsar Convention, 1971.
The Convention expressly included some earthy and artificial wetlands, whether imperishable oregon temporary, without distinction, elder advocator Gopal Sankaranarayanan and advocator Anindita Mitra submitted for the petitioners.
Important waterbodies
“The explanation nether the 2017 Rules volition person the disastrous interaction of 39 human-made wetlands, retired of a full of 94 Ramsar Convention wetlands located successful India, losing their presumption arsenic protected wetlands. By carving retired exclusions for waterbodies constructed for drinking water, irrigation, aquaculture, brackish production, recreation, and allied purposes, the Rule has the effect of removing a important bulk of India’s wetlands from the protective model of biology law,” the petitioners submitted.
The petition submitted that the 2010 Rules, which the 2017 1 replaced, had included human-made wetlands, including each forms of tanks.
Rule 2(g) of the 2010 Rules had protected waterbodies/tanks specifically constructed for drinking h2o purposes and structures exclusively utilized for aquaculture, brackish production, recreation and irrigation purposes.
The dilution witnessed successful the 2017 Rules violated the rule of non-regression, which prohibits governments from weakening an existing ineligible protection.
“While the 2010 Rules adopted the Ramsar explanation successful full, created Central and State Wetland Authorities, and imposed explicit prohibitions connected reclamation and imperishable construction, the 2017 model dilutes these safeguards by removing the Central authority, deleting the docket of prohibited activities, and contracting the definitional scope of wetlands,” Mr. Sankaranarayanan submitted.
The petition highlighted that the Supreme Court’s ain judgement successful M.K. Balakrishnan v. Union of India (reported successful 2017) has been violated.
“This tribunal had directed that each 2,01,503 wetlands identified successful the National Wetland Atlas beryllium protected... Instead of implementing these directions, the Union authorities has superseded the 2010 Rules and introduced a narrower explanation that defeats the precise mandate of this court,” the petitioners submitted.
Manner of identifying wetlands
The 2017 Rules has besides departed from the proven mode of recognition and signaling of wetlands successful nationalist wetland inventories based connected their functional characteristics, including hydrology, ungraded saturation, biodiversity support, flood moderation, and groundwater recharge alternatively than their origin, that is, human-made oregon natural.
India’s ain National Wetland Atlas, 2011, and the National Wetland Inventory and Assessment prepared by the Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO) classify earthy and artificial wetlands unneurotic arsenic portion of a unified ecological continuum, the petition said.
