The Supreme Court on Thursday (May 21, 2026) declined to interfere with the environmental clearances granted to the Adani Group’s coal block project in Madhya Pradesh’s Singrauli district, pointing to the delay in challenging the approvals.

A Bench comprising Justices P.S. Narasimha and Alok Aradhe was hearing a plea filed by environmental activist Ajay Dubey challenging an April 22 order of the National Green Tribunal (NGT), which had dismissed his plea against the May 2025 environmental clearance granted to Mahan Energen Ltd., a subsidiary of Adani Power, on the ground of limitation.

Questioning the delay, the Bench orally observed, “Your original application itself was filed on January 22… why was there such a delay?”

Under Section 16 of the National Green Tribunal Act, 2010, challenges to orders passed by statutory authorities must ordinarily be filed within 30 days, with a further 60-day extension permissible upon sufficient cause being shown.

‘Serious environmental issue’

Appearing for Mr. Dubey, advocate Siddharth Gupta contended that the matter involved grave environmental concerns and that technical objections ought not to stand in the way of the court exercising its extraordinary powers under Article 142 of the Constitution to examine the validity of the clearances.

“This is a serious environmental issue. It is not adversarial litigation. The inherent powers of this court under Article 142 are not curtailed or affected in any manner by the NGT Act. Someone needs to judicially examine the clearances,” he submitted.

Mr. Gupta further argued that the project would lead to the felling of nearly six lakh trees spread across approximately 27 square kilometres of dense evergreen forest in Singrauli, an area designated as a “no-go” zone in 2011 and recognised as an elephant corridor.

Senior advocate A.N.S. Nadkarni, appearing for the Adani Group, however, urged the court to dismiss the plea.

The Bench observed that the NGT had relied upon the Supreme Court’s 2025 ruling in Talli Gram Panchayat v. Union of India, where the court had examined the scope of limitation under Section 16 after considering earlier judgments and orders passed by the tribunal.

“The matter was heard at length. In that case, we were concerned because it involved an environmental issue,” the Bench observed.

‘No proper communication’

Mr. Gupta, however, argued that the NGT had erroneously calculated the limitation period from May 10, 2025 — the date on which the forest clearance was uploaded on the website of the Union Ministry of Environment, Forest and Climate Change (MoEF&CC).

Referring to the Talli Gram Panchayat ruling, he submitted that environmental clearance orders must not only be uploaded on the Ministry’s website but also published in two local newspapers and placed on the websites of the concerned gram panchayats and municipal authorities to ensure adequate public notice.

“It was only uploaded on the website of the MoEF&CC. What was necessary was proper communication of the factum of forest clearance to affected persons,” he submitted.

The Bench thereafter suggested that Mr. Dubey could pursue the matter through a writ petition. Following this, Mr. Gupta sought permission to withdraw the plea, which the court allowed while granting him liberty to “avail other legal remedies, if any”.

In his petition, Mr. Dubey had sought to justify the delay on the ground that the forest clearance had “never been communicated to the public at large”.

“However, in the present case, except for being uploaded on the official website of the MoEF&CC, Union of India, that too on an obscure page discoverable only after considerable surfing and navigation, there has been no other mode through which the factum of forest clearance was placed in the public domain by the MoEF&CC,” the plea stated.

He apprised the court that it was only after newspaper reports in the first week of December 2025 highlighted large-scale deforestation involving over 70,000 trees, alongside mass protests by local residents, that the grant of forest clearance for a coal block spanning 1,397.54 hectares of reserved dense forest land to an Adani Power subsidiary came to public notice.

‘No-go area’

The plea also pointed out that the MoEF&CC had, during 2011-12, classified certain dense forest areas in Madhya Pradesh and Chhattisgarh as “no-go areas”, where coal block allocation and mining activities were considered impermissible in the larger environmental and public interest.

“The ‘no-go areas’ were identified as regions possessing high forest density and canopy cover above 0.40–0.50, comprising diverse species of trees, plantations, flora and fauna. It was consciously decided by the MoEF&CC that no permission for mining, including coal mining, would be granted in such ‘no-go areas’,” the plea added.