Dr. Mohiuddin Farooque Vs. Bangladesh, represented by the Secretary, Ministry of Irrigation, Water Resources and Flood Control and others

The main issue of dispute, in this case, was whether BELA, an organization, concerned with the protection of the people of the country from the ill-effects of environmental hazards and ecological imbalance had locus standi in questioning the legality of the activities of FAP, FAP-20, and the FPCO, on the grounds that activities would adversely affect more than a million human lives and natural resources and the natural habitat of man and other flora and fauna and that they are allegedly anti-environment and anti-people project.

Relevant Citation
Civil Appeal No. 24 of 1995; 49 DLR (AD) (1997) 1

Relevant Laws and Principles
- Article 7, 8, 11, 13, 14, 36, 38, 102, 106 and 153(3)

- Locus Standi

Ruling
The court declared that in the context of engaging concern for the conservation of the environment, a national organization like BELA, which claims to have studied and conducted research on the disputed project, can and should be attributed a threshold standing as having sufficient interest in the matter, and thereby regarded as a person aggrieved to maintain the writ petition. The court further stated that the right to life contained within its scope the protection and preservation of the environment, ecological balance free from pollution of air and water, sanitation without which life can hardly be enjoyed. In reference to Justice Douglas’s minority opinion in Sierra Club vs. Morton, 401 US 907 (1971) (No.70-34), the court was of the opinion that “contemporary public concern for protecting nature's ecological equilibrium should lead to the conferral of standing upon environmental objects to sue for their own preservation.” Dr. Farooque, the Secretary-General of BELA, submitted that the beneficiaries of the writ petition were not the members of BELA itself but the people in general, including the generation yet to be born for whom the present generation holds the environment as an inter-generational trust, as every generation has a responsibility to the next to preserve the rhythm and harmony that their inherited environment bequeathed to them. Thus BELA invoked the principle of Inter-generational Justice, in order to establish their locus standi.

Takeaways
The extension of the locus standi will be very pivotal for the climate change litigations. Since locus standi goes to the root of any dispute and lack of it may compel the courts to reject a case without even looking at the merits. Relaxing the locus standi in environmental-related disputes will ensure that any conscious citizen or organization can file cases regarding the implementation of laws and policies related to protection of environment and climate change.