Evan V

The Supreme Court on Monday indicated that it will undertake an exercise to re-caption the long-running M.C. Mehta matters, observing that the present listing format creates the impression that writ petitions instituted in 1984–85 remain undecided.

A Three Judge Bench of Chief Justice of India Surya Kant, Justice Joymalya Bagchi and Justice Vipul Pancholi noted that, although the original issues raised in these public interest litigations were decided long ago, miscellaneous and interim applications continue to be filed in the same case titles in relation to contemporary grievances, including issues concerning air pollution, land-ceiling matters in Delhi-NCR, and environmental concerns in the Taj Trapezium Zone.

During the hearing, the Chief Justice expressed concern that the repeated listing of fresh applications under old M.C. Mehta case titles creates an erroneous impression in institutional records that petitions from 1984–85 are still pending on merits. The Court also indicated that such listings create avoidable confusion in reporting old-pendency data.

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Deprecating the present practice, the CJI orally observed: "How many matters - in MC Mehta, in MC Mehta? How many times MC Mehta will be [relieved] in a day? Why can't there be one matter of MC Mehta? When you ask in Parliament, we have to report that how many old matters are pending before us. Every time you put us in an embarrassing position that 1985 matter is pending. What is happening in this Court!? Why can't we treat as separate applications clubbing together and dealing with them separately? I am not going to have these 1985 matters pending here."

The CJI further indicated that new grievances ought to be brought in independent proceedings rather than being routinely tagged on to decades-old PILs.

The Court recorded that there are three distinct M.C. Mehta v. Union of India matters from 1984–85 in which such applications continue to be filed. In its dictated order, the Bench observed: "It appears that there are multiple matters which are shown pending captioned as MC Mehta v. Union of India. There's one WP(C) No.13381/1984, which stood decided decades ago. Still miscellaneous applications/interim applications are filed and those are listed in such a manner as if the 1984 writ petition is still pending before the Court. There's another matter captioned as MC Mehta v. UoI, WP(C) No.4677/1985. In this matter too, several IAs have been filed from time to time and that decided matter is again shown alive and pending. There's a third matter WP(C) No.13029/1985. List these matters on 3 different dates. All IAs/MAs filed in each of these cases be listed separately on the date fixed."

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The Bench also requested that all counsel appearing in these matters assist the Court in determining how the cases may be re-captioned "without reviving the old matters which have been decided way back".

Additionally, the Court directed that the exercise should include identifying issues that may be more effectively addressed by the jurisdictional High Courts.

The CJI indicated that the matters are likely to be taken up in the first week of March, and also remarked that the Court was exhausted with the present manner in which such applications were being filed and placed on record.

Case Title: M.C. Mehta v. Union of India & Ors. 

Case No.: W.P.(C) No. 13381/1984

Bench: Chief Justice Surya Kant, Justice Joymalya Bagchi and Justice Vipul Pancholi