Judicial Review Of The Ultra Vires Administrative Actions In Forest Land Allotments: A Study In Indian Environmental Governance

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P Sagarika Naidu, LL.M., School of Law, Christ (Deemed to be University), Bengaluru, India

ABSTRACT

Governance of forest land in India has featured a long-standing contestation among ecological imperatives, community rights, and administrative discretion. This study engages in the judicial review of ultra vires administrative decisions in relation to allotments of forest land as a site of environmental governance. The central aim is to assess how aspects of the constitutional framework, statutory schemes, and judicial interpretations operate to constrain administrative overreach, while also revealing systemic gaps that enable such overreach to occur. The study employs a doctrinal and analytical framework, relying on constitutional text, statutory frameworks such as the Forest (Conservation) Act, 1980, and the Scheduled Tribes and Other Traditional Forest Dwellers (Recognition of Forest Rights) Act, 2006, and leading decisions, including the cases of Rural Litigation and Entitlement Kendra v. State of U.P. and T.N. Godavarman Thirumulpad v. Union of India. The scholarly literature indicates that while there has been significant judicial activism in terms of expanding accountability and rights in relation to the environment, it has not been without its unintended effects, including a heightened centralization of regulatory authority and a greater role of technocracy. This study grapples with the abiding nature of ultra vires administrative behaviour, which persists in the face of judicial review, due to fragmentation of administrative institutions, unresolved interpretive problems, and political–bureaucratic collusion and indifference. The study shows evidence that judicial review has changed how we think about environmental law but has little conclusive evidence to support limiting public access to circumvent couldn't be the same institutional responses. The study concludes by offering suggestions for a legal and institutional policy context that provides safeguards for environmental, public, and constitutional purposes within the review of administrative decision-making in forest governance.

Keywords: Judicial Review; Ultra Vires; Forest Land Allotment; Environmental Governance; Administrative Law.

126. JUDICIAL REVIEW OF THE ULTRA VIRES ADMINISTRATIVE ACTIONS IN FOREST LAND ALLOTMENTS-

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