SC refuses to interfere with clearance to Adani’s Madhya Pradesh coal block project

THe sublime margaret court on th refused to interfere with the woodland clearance for the Adani aggroup’s coal block project in Madhya Pradesh’s Singrauli, questioning the petitioner about the delay in filing his plea.Environmental activist Ajay Dubey moved the Supreme Court after the National Green Tribunal (NGT) on April 22 dismissed his plea against the May 2025 clearance to Adani Group’s Mahan Energen Limited on the grounds of delay.“Why so much delay. The original application by you was filed before the NGT on January 22,” said a bench of justices PS Narasimha and Alok Aradhe.Section 16 of the NGT Act allows challenging orders of authorities within 30 days or within the next 60 days if there is sufficient cause for the delay.Advocate Siddharth Gupta, who appeared for Dubey, argued that this is an environmental matter and a technical ground should not impede the court from invoking its extraordinary constitutional power under the Constitution’s Article 142 to review the clearance.The court suggested that Dubey may raise this matter in a writ petition, as Gupta agreed to withdraw the plea. It recorded his submission saying, “The petitioner seeks to withdraw the appeal... To avail other legal remedies, if any.”Gupta maintained that over 600,000 trees will be cut down in the dense, evergreen forests in Singrauli, which was declared a “no-go” zone in 2011, and an elephant corridor. He said the coal block would adversely affect the wildlife.Gupta said Madhya Pradesh’s principal chief conservator of forests denied the Stage-I clearance as the area is home to leopards, jackals, wild bears, nilgais, and elephants. Another committee, which reviewed the proposal later, granted permission for the coal block.“Somebody needs to examine the validity of this forest clearance,” Gupta said. Senior advocate ANS Nadkarni, appearing for the Adani Group, urged the court to dismiss the matter.The bench said the NGT cited the Supreme Court’s order in the 2025 Talli Gram Panchayat versus Union of India case, where it considered the limitation under Section 16 after examining past judgments and NGT orders. “The matter was heard at length. In that case, we were concerned because it involved an environmental issue.”Gupta said that the NGT calculated the limitation period from the date the clearance approval order was passed and uploaded on the environment, forest, and climate change ministry website on May 10, 2025. He added that Section 16 states that the order has to be “communicated”.Gupta said there was no means by which this order was communicated to the public at large. He added that Dubey learnt about the clearance and decided to challenge it after residents protested against the project, and it was reported in newspapers when the deforestation started in December 2025.Dubey’s petition said that other than the ministry’s website, there is no material on record to show that the factum of forest clearance was brought into the public domain at the instance of either the ministry or the beneficiary company.The coal block was allocated over an area of 1397.54 hectares under reserved and protected forest areas. “...the allotted area is also a dense evergreen forest with an average forest canopy of ‘0.5 to 0.6’ (moderate dense to very dense forests), comprising a deeply rich species of evergreen trees like saal, sagvan, chaar, sendha, etc,” the petition said.Dubey argued that the ministry designated certain categories of dense forests in Madhya Pradesh and Chhattisgarh in 2011-12, as “no-go areas”, where coal block allotments and mining were held to be completely impermissible in the larger environmental and public interest. “This list included the dense forests of Singrauli,” he argued.