M.C. Mehta v. Union of India (1987)

The last question in a public interest petition is the one that decides whether the exercise was worth anything: what can the court actually order? If the Court's powers in an Article 32 petition were confined to the classical writs and to principles already settled, a petition about a new kind of harm — an industrial gas leak, an unregulated hazardous industry — would end in a declaration and nothing more.

M.C. Mehta, decided by a Constitution Bench, is the authority on remedies in this course's PIL sequence, and it supplies the sentence a student needs on why the law may move.

The proceedings arose out of harm caused by a hazardous activity, and the question of the Court's power concerned what relief could be given to those affected by it. The course does not set out further facts; use the case for the propositions on principle and remedy.

1. Law must keep pace with changing social and economic norms.
2. In a public interest matter the Court may evolve new principles.
3. The Court has incidental and ancillary powers to devise new methods of enforcement of fundamental rights, including compensation for victims of hazardous activities.

1. Treat the jurisdiction as remedial, not declaratory. Article 32 gives a right to move the Court for enforcement of fundamental rights; a power to enforce must carry the powers necessary to make enforcement effective, which is where the incidental and ancillary powers come from.
2. Let the principle follow the harm. New industrial and social conditions produce injuries that older rules were not framed for; a court that could apply only settled principles would leave those injuries without a remedy.
3. Make the remedy reach the victim. A direction that regulates conduct for the future does nothing for the person already harmed, so compensation is treated as an available method of enforcement rather than a matter reserved to a separate civil suit.
4. Keep the innovation inside the constitutional function. The Court evolves principles in enforcing a right, not at large — which is why the proposition is stated in the context of fundamental rights.

It opens the remedies limb, completing the sequence: S.P. Gupta (standing), PUDR (nature), Bandhua Mukti Morcha (procedure), this case (remedies). Quote the proposition that law must keep pace with changing social and economic norms whenever an answer needs a justification for judicial development — it is equally usable in the technology part of this module, where the same idea underlies reading a statutory requirement of notice in writing as covering fax and e-mail, and reading the requirement that evidence be recorded in the accused's presence as satisfied by video conferencing.

In drafting, it is the authority behind the prayer clauses. Prayers should be precise and workable directions, numbered and self-contained, with provision for monitoring, and with compensation where the law supports it.

It disposes of the argument that a constitutional court in a public interest petition can only declare the law as it stands, or that a victim of a hazardous activity must be sent away to a civil suit for damages.

It does not decide the measure of compensation in any given case, and it does not authorise a court to create rights outside the enforcement of fundamental rights. It also does not touch standing or procedure; a petition that fails S.P. Gupta never reaches the question of remedy.