The High Court retains jurisdiction under Articles 226 and 227 of the Constitution despite the establishment of specialized forums, exercising discretion in determining whether to entertain matters or redirect parties to appropriate statutory remedies.

JUDGMENT :

HARISH TANDON, CJ.

1. The question was raised before the counsel on the first motion as to whether the relief claimed in the instant writ petition can also be claimed before the specialized Tribunal i.e. National Green Tribunal (for short, ‘NGT’) and, therefore, why the writ Court should not relegate the parties to approach the said Tribunal. In other words, the Bench was of the view that once the specialized Tribunal is constituted to deal with the issues raised in the instant writ petition, whether the litigant can bypass such statutory forum and approach the High Court as a rule of convenience.

2. We are not unmindful of the settled proposition of law that the power to issue writs under Article 226 of the Constitution of India and power of superintendence exercised by the High Court over the subordinate courts and Tribunals are inviolable and cannot be abridged or whittled down through a legislative exercise as the same is a basic structure of the Constitution, yet at times, the writ Court may refuse to exercise such powers not as a matter of compulsion, but of discretion. There is no absolute bar in entertaining the writ petitions under Article 226 of the Constitution of India despite an alternative remedy available to the litigant, but the writ Court may refuse to entertain such writ petitions and relegate the parties to exhaust the statutory remedy, which is appropriate and effective by using its discretion.

3. The point was raised, at the threshold, in the instant writ petition as to why the litigant should not be directed to exhaust such statutory remedy upon noticing the facts narrated in the writ petition and the reliefs claimed therein. The important issues raised in the instant writ petition pertain to unregulated dumping of fly ash during the construction of the National Highway No.49 (for short, ‘NH-49’) causing pollution in the environment and also causing an extensive damage to the crops of the people in the vicinity. Apart from the same, such dumping of fly ash in an indiscriminate manner causes a contamination of the ponds and the ground water, which are essential for irrigation and the pisciculture, causing death of fish and affects the water body being the source for irrigation.

4. The concern is shown when the Ministry of Road Transport and Highways ensued the construction of NH-49 and the authorities used fly ash by dumping in open air without taking any safeguard by covering the same with morrum or soil and at times, during the rainy season, it washed away to engulf farmlands and ponds and even the village roads.

5. We have no hesitation not even inkling of doubt that the concern shown in the writ petition is of a significant importance, but the entertainability of the writ petition was raised because of setting up of the specialized forum established under the National Green Tribunal Act, 2010 (for short, ‘NGT Act’).

6. This Court was reminded of the decision rendered by the apex Court in Madhya Pradesh High Court Advocates Bar Association v. Union of India , reported in 2022 SCC OnLine SC 639; 2022 LiveLaw (SC) 495, where the writ petition was filed under Article 32 of the Constitution of India before the apex Court challenging the vires of the NGT Act on multiple grounds including that it suffers from the vice of excessive delegation. The apex Court recapitulated the genesis of the said Act and observed that the precursor to the NGT Act was the 186^th Report of the Law Commission of India primarily aimed to establish the specialized environmental courts with qualified judges and technical experts to deal with the environ