Research articleOpen accessVol. 14, Issue 10, November 2026
- Received
- 20 September 2026
- Accepted
- 6 October 2026
- Published
- 27 November 2026
- Licence
- CC BY 4.0
How to cite
Rashmi Shukla (2026). Evolution of Environmental Law in India Post-Bhopal Disaster. International Journal of Research in Humanities and Social Sciences, 14(10), 60-65.
Abstract
The Bhopal gas disaster of December 1984 exposed serious gaps in India’s regulatory, liability, and compensation framework for hazardous industry. This paper examines how Indian environmental law evolved in the four decades that followed. It combines a doctrinal review of statutes and rules with a coded content analysis of 240 Supreme Court of India judgments delivered between 1985 and 2023, and a structured survey of 112 environmental law practitioners, regulators, and academics. The judgments were divided into four periods and coded for the invocation of five principles: the constitutional right to a healthy environment, polluter pays, the precautionary principle, sustainable development, and the public trust doctrine. Invocation of all five rose significantly across the periods (χ²(3) between 19.1 and 65.8, p < 0.001). Sustainable development was the most frequently invoked principle in the latest period (81.3%). The petitioner success rate, by contrast, rose only modestly, from 41.7% to 60.9%, a change that was not statistically significant (χ²(3) = 4.30, p = 0.231). Practitioners rated judicially created doctrines (M = 4.12) above statutory insurance and impact assessment mechanisms. The findings suggest that post-Bhopal environmental law developed mainly through judicial innovation, and that statutory implementation has lagged behind doctrinal expansion.
Keywords: Bhopal gas disaster, environmental law, absolute liability, polluter pays principle, National Green Tribunal, public interest litigation, India
References
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How to cite
Rashmi Shukla (2026). Evolution of Environmental Law in India Post-Bhopal Disaster. International Journal of Research in Humanities and Social Sciences, 14(10), 60-65.
Licence
This article is open access, published under the CC BY 4.0 licence. Copyright remains with the authors.