The Supreme Court ruled that prior environmental clearance remains mandatory, striking down the Centre's 2021 office memorandum while upholding the 2017 notification. The Supreme Court Wednesday struck down the Centre’s 2021 office memorandum regarding retrospective approval for projects that had already commenced construction or operation without environmental clearances. A bench of Chief Justice Surya Kant and Justices Joymalya Bagchi and Vipul M Pancholi, however, said the Centre can grant exceptions where the project is in public interest, but that has to be done under Section 3 of the Environment (Protection) Act, 1986, and not through a mere administrative office memorandum. To avoid disruption to existing projects, the bench said the ruling will apply prospectively, leaving existing clearances unaffected. The Supreme Court clarified that its earlier decisions in Common Cause and Alembic Pharmaceuticalswere rendered in the context of prevailing laws at the time and “do not place a clog on the power of the Central government to issue an appropriate, narrowly tailored amnesty notification in supervening public interest as an exception to the 2006 notification”.