Justice Kuldip Singh, who passed away on November 25 at the age of 92, was a colossus of environmental litigation. He carried forward the environmental revolution launched by Justice P.N. Bhagwati after the Bhopal Gas Tragedy case and the Shriram Oleum Gas Leak case in Delhi.
Born on January 1, 1932, in Jhelum, Punjab (now in Pakistan), Singh received his education from Col. Brown Cambridge School in Dehradun, followed by a first law degree from Punjab University in 1955. He later went to the University of London in 1958 for his second law degree. There, he became a barrister-at-law at Lincoln’s Inn before returning to India in 1959. He had a successful stint at the Bar in the Punjab and Haryana High Court at Chandigarh, where, in addition to a host of matters in service law, he also took up constitutional, cooperative, and election law cases, besides land acquisition and criminal matters. He represented prominent universities, corporations, and institutions during his many years of legal practice. He was also president of the Punjab and Haryana High Court Bar Association (1976-77).
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Kuldip Singh briefly served as Advocate General, Punjab, in 1987 (May-August). Thereafter, he moved to Delhi to serve as the Additional Solicitor General of India. He owed some of his professional rise to the then Governor of Punjab, Siddhartha Shankar Ray, who himself had been a successful barrister. It was Ray who insisted to the Union Government that a Sikh representative was required on the Supreme Court in those tumultuous days when terrorism had not fully died down after “Operation Blue Star” in Punjab.
Direct appointment to Supreme Court
Additional Solicitor General Kuldip Singh directly became Justice Kuldip Singh of the Supreme Court. He was the fourth direct appointment in the court’s history after Justices Venkatarama Iyer, Subimal Chandra Roy, and S.M. Sikri. He was sworn in on the same day as Justice A.M. Ahmadi, but he was informed by the then Chief Justice of India (CJI) R.S. Pathak that he would be taking oath after Justice Ahmadi. This change in sequence meant Justice Ahmadi would become the CJI, but Justice Singh would not: if Justice Singh had taken oath prior to Ahmadi, he would have been the CJI from October 1994 until December 1996 and Justice Ahmadi for three months thereafter. This missed opportunity rankled with Singh for a long time and made for a rather strained but proper working relationship with Ahmadi.
In his eight years (December 14, 1988, to December 21, 1996) on the Supreme Court bench, Justice Singh, in addition to his major judgments on environmental law, was also a full participant in several Constitution Bench judgments, including S.R. Bommai v. Union of India, 1994 (3) SCC 1 (the President Rule’s Case) and the Second Judges case, 1993 (Supreme Court Advocates-on-Record vs. Union of India, 1993 (4) SCC 441), wherein the Supreme Court overruled its earlier verdict and changed the meaning of consultation to concurrence of the judiciary in judicial appointments.
His ecological focus set standards for India’s environmental jurisprudence, mainly through the M.C. Mehta cases. In M.C. Mehta v. Kamal Nath, Justice Singh held that the public trust doctrine was part of Indian law and extended to protecting natural resources such as rivers, seas, forests, air, and other such resources. In the Taj Trapezium case, he noted that industries in and around the Taj Mahal were increasingly using coke and coal, damaging both the monument and the health of people living in the vicinity. In this case, as well as in the Calcutta Tanneries case (concerning the discharge of toxic waste into the river Ganga), Justice Singh applied the “polluter pays” principle, establishing strong precedents and earning the moniker “Green Judge”.
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While presiding in court, Justice Singh showed a rough, earthy wisdom and often ran roughshod over the niceties of arguments and literary allusions that senior counsels of those days were prone to. L.M. Singhvi, while arguing the case of the street vendors in Delhi, alluded to “Petticoat Lane” in London, hoping to elicit some sympathetic response from his lordship’s memories of his London days. He was met with a brusque “Ohh ho, what petticoats? We are in Delhi, no?”
Since Justice Singh had been a judge for only eight years in life, he continued to have an excellent relationship with the Bar and used to make it a point to come to his favourite haunts—the Bar Room and the Coffee Shop in the Supreme Court. He could take the ribbing of the Bar and give it back in equal measure. There is a famous instance when he roared at G. Ramaswami, the then Attorney General for India. “Oh Mr. Ramaswami, do you think we are fools sitting up here?” he asked, to which Ramaswami’s memorable response was, “Your lordship has put me in a difficult position; if I say yes, it will be contempt, but if I say no, it will be perjury.” The whole court, including Justice Singh, resounded with laughter.
Common sense view of justice
Post-retirement, Justice Singh continued to serve the nation by heading the Delimitation Commission of 2002. He then had many happy years with his loving family, including his wife, Prof. Gurminder Kaur, daughters Simran and Chandana, and sons Paramjit and Deepinder. Paramjit Singh Patwalia became a judge of the Punjab and Haryana High Court but resigned to return to practising law and later became an Additional Solicitor General of India. Deepinder Singh Patwalia is also a designated senior advocate who served briefly as the Advocate General of Punjab.
Kuldip Singh’s passing marks the end of an era of bold, activist environmental judges. His strong common-sense view of justice, his concern for the poor and for the environment, all marked him out as a judge with a social mission to lead India to a better place. The legal world has lost a titan and the environment one of its most dedicated warriors.
The author is a Senior Advocate designated by the Supreme Court. He frequently writes and comments on legal and constitutional issues.
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