JUDGMENT

RANGANATH MISRA, C.J.I. — This is an application under Article 32 of the Constitution in the public interest litigation sector. A practising advocate who is the Chairman of the Environment Protection Cell operating at Delhi is the petitioner. This Court has been asked to issue directions for closing down of hazardous industries located in the densely populated areas of Delhi and for regulation of air pollution caused by automobiles operating in the area as also the thermal units generating power for the Delhi Electric Supply Undertaking (hereafter referred to as DESU).

2. The Union Territory of Delhi has a total population of about 96 lakhs, out of which the urban area consisting of old Delhi, New Delhi and the Cantonment has a population of around 90 lakhs. By 1947 when the country became independent, Delhi had a population of a little over 5 lakhs. In these little more than two scores of years the population has, thus, multiplied by 19 times. Though it is a spread out city, in some pockets, the density of population is very high and these have become congested.

3. The problem of environmental pollution is global in an increasingly small world and concerns all countries irrespective of their size, level of development or ideology. Notwithstanding political division of the world into national units, the oceanic world is an interconnected whole; and winds that blow over the countries are also one. Pollution is capable of moving from continent to continent. If USSR carries out a nuclear test, the fall-out may be carried by the winds to any part of the world and such fall-out of irresponsible disposal of radioactive waste from a remote energy plant in one country may turn out to have greater adverse effect on the neighbouring countries than the danger of a fullfledged war. Informed public mind is already agitated over the polluting effect of the Gulf War and the common concern of the entire homosapien race is obsessed by the apprehension of acid rain, toxic effect on the seas and even on the atmosphere.

4. The awareness of interaction of man with his environment is of recent origin. The Declaration of the United Nations Conference on the Human Environment held in Stockholm in June 1972 stated:

"Man is both creature and moulder of his environment, which gives him physical substance and affords him the opportunity forintellectual, moral, social and spiritual growth. In the long and tortuous evolution of the human race on this planet a stage has been reached when, through rapid acceleration of science and technology, man has acquired the power to transform his environment in countless ways and on an unprecedented scale. Both aspects of mans environment, the natural and the manmade, are essential to his well-being and to the enjoyment of the basic human rights - even the right of life itself."

Principle No. 1 of the same Declaration went on to say: "Man has the fundamental right to freedom, equality and adequate conditions of life, in an environment of a quality that permits a life of dignity and well-being, and he bears a solemn responsibility to protect and improve the environment for present and future generations ...."

5. The closeness of the undeveloped and underdeveloped communities to nature is not found in the developed ones. Our ancestors had realised the importance of the tie between man and his environment. The Samaveda notes the Flute of Divine Love by saying:

"Listen to the melodious music of the divine poet. He plays upon the flute of love, the notes soar to high heaven and reach the distant stars and dance on the raging waves of the sea. The earth, the sea, the sky, the stars are all woven together by the soft strains of the divine music. Its vibrants echo through the corridors of time in the endless canopy of the sky."

6. Norman Myers quoted in Sir Edmond Hillarys Ecology 2000 has rightly observed:

"The fate of African environments is thus determined not only by local circumstances. It is influenced, in part at least,