WHEN THE SUPREME COURT'S three-judge bench assembled on Wednesday to hear the Vanashakti matter, the petitioners opposing ex-post facto environmental clearances (‘ECs’) came not to argue the merits of their case, but to argue that they could not argue it at all. The reason, Senior Advocate Gopal Sankaranarayanan, told the bench of Chief Justice of India Surya Kant, and Justices Joymalya Bagchi, and Vipul M. Pancholi, was that a prior three-judge bench, sitting in review jurisdiction in November 2025, had already decided the very questions that the petitioners needed to argue.
“I stand here only because your review has been allowed,” Sankaranarayanan, representing Vanashakti, a Mumbai-based NGO, told the Court. “Otherwise, I was outside the court as a happy litigant having succeeded before two judges. I'm back here because the review reopened it but decided fully on the merits against me.”
It was, by any measure, an unusual position to be in.
