Judicial Interpretation Of Coastal Aquaculture: Analysing The Case Of S. Jagannath V. Union Of India (1997)
- IJLLR Journal
- Jul 8
- 1 min read
Sanskriti Yadav, National Law School of India University, Bangalore
ABSTRACT
India’s expansion of coastal shrimp farming since the 1990s brought big economic wins, but also real ecological and social costs, like mangrove loss, soil salinisation and the pushing out of long-standing fishing communities. Since the regulatory enforcement was weak in practice, the Supreme Court in S. Jagannath v. Union of India (1997) stepped in and held that environmental harm counts as a violation of the constitutional right to life under Article 21, and highlighted both the Precautionary and Polluter Pays Principles to stop intensive shrimp farming in ecologically sensitive coastal zones. This paper analyses whether the prevention focused rights-based setup that was ruled by the Supreme Court has lasted the later legal changes. The paper argues that the Coastal Aquaculture Authority Act, 2005, and then the 2023 Amendment have slowly watered down the Court’s original idea, turning a ban into a licensing arrangement, and shifting from criminal liability to civil penalties that are more negotiable, thereby giving retrospective backing to earlier violations. Although the Precautionary and Polluter Pays Principles are still recognised by law but their underlying logic has been reversed and environmental harm is now treated as a manageable cost rather than a constitutional wrong that must be stopped. The paper draws the conclusion that this change isn’t exactly a direct doctrinal rejection of those principles, but more like a structural change that has hollowed out their preventive and deterrent power, and as a result coastal communities end up carrying most of the ecological and social costs.
