A Minimum, Not a Maximum

In its order of 3 June 2022 in In re: T.N. Godavarman Thirumulpad v. Union of India, a three-judge bench directed that every national park and wildlife sanctuary maintain an eco-sensitive zone of at least one kilometre from its demarcated boundary. The word that carries the weight is minimum. The same order preserved any wider zone already fixed by a notification or statutory instrument, and the Court's framework treats ten kilometres as the operative default wherever a State has submitted no proposal at all. One kilometre was a floor beneath which protection could not fall. It was never a ceiling to which protection should be lowered.

The State's public case collapses that distinction. Treating the one-kilometre minimum as a licence to strip a wider buffer down to the bare statutory threshold reads the judgment backwards. A floor fixed to stop protection from disappearing cannot double as the measure of how much protection may be removed.

Does the 2023 Modification Rescue the State?

There is a second half to this story that should definitely be confronted, because the State raises it first. On 26 April 2023 the Supreme Court modified its 2022 order, holding that a uniform one-kilometre rule was impractical and that the direction would not apply where a draft or final eco-sensitive zone notification already existed or a proposal was under consideration, restoring primacy to site-specific zones prepared under the 2011 guidelines, while retaining the ban on mining within one kilometre. Kaziranga, however, has no final notification. As the Gauhati High Court recorded in March 2026, the ten-kilometre default continues to operate precisely because the site-specific exercise remains incomplete. The State therefore says it is not rolling anything back, rather it is finishing an overdue process, and is free to arrive at one kilometre if that is where the science leads.

This contention demands a substantive evaluation on its merits rather than a superficial or rhetorical dismissal. The answer lies in why the default exists at all.

Who Carries the Burden?

The Court imposed the default as a precautionary baseline for parks whose boundaries had not been drawn with scientific care, a holding position adopted because certainty was absent, not because ten kilometres was itself exact. Indian environmental law places the burden of justifying an intervention on the party seeking it. In Vellore Citizens' Welfare Forum v. Union of India, the Supreme Court made the precautionary principle part of the law of the land and held that the onus lies on the developer to show that a proposed action is environmentally benign. Shrinking a precautionary buffer by as much as ninety per cent is an intervention of exactly that kind. It is the State, not the park's defenders, that must establish on the record that one kilometre is ecologically sufficient. A reduction announced before the supporting studies, the Eco-Sensitive Zone Expert Committee's scrutiny and the public hearings are complete does not complete a neutral process, rather it reverses the burden the law assigns.

A Floodplain is Not a Plot of Real Estate

The ecological objection is not sentimental, rather it is spatial. Kaziranga is a floodplain. Each monsoon, rhinos, deer, elephants and tigers flee the rising Brahmaputra for the higher ground of the Karbi Anglong hills, crossing the national highway and moving through identified animal corridors that lie well beyond any one-kilometre line. The protected area on the map is not the ecosystem the animals use. A buffer drawn as a thin ribbon around a static boundary treats a dynamic, migratory landscape as though it were a plot of real estate. The relief the petition seeks is modest and legally orthodox, i.e., the final zone be fixed only after a comprehensive, site-specific assessment of wildlife movement, flood ecology, hydrology, wetlands and corridor connectivity, and that the existing regime continue until that exercise is honestly done.

The Public Trust, and Non-Regression

The public trust doctrine does the real work here, rather than decorative duty. In M.C. Mehta v. Kamal Nath, the Supreme Court held that the State holds ecologically sensitive natural resources as a trustee for the public and for future generations, and set aside the lease of a fragile Beas riverbank to a private motel as a breach of that trust. The parallel to Kaziranga is close, because there too the conduct in question is the conversion of a protected margin into commercial hospitality. Articles 48A and 51A(g) supply the constitutional backdrop, but Kamal Nath supplies the operative rule, i.e., a trustee may refine a boundary with better knowledge, yet may not use a minimum threshold as cover to release the margin to private commerce. The international principle of non-regression, that protections once secured are not casually withdrawn, is not yet settled Indian doctrine, but it follows naturally from the trust and precautionary principles and belongs in any reading of Article 21 here.

Reading the Trustee's Decisions Together

In 1996 the environment ministry notified a fifteen-kilometre no-development zone around the Numaligarh refinery on Kaziranga's eastern flank, precisely because industrial pressure there endangered the park's wildlife, a safeguard the National Green Tribunal, and later the Supreme Court, had to enforce against the refinery's own wall across an elephant corridor at Deopahar. The State that once accepted a fifteen-kilometre industrial buffer now proposes a one-kilometre ecological one. In the same span of years it withdrew an integrated eco-sensitive zone proposal covering roughly 3,600 square kilometres and eight protected areas, and in June 2025 cancelled the preliminary notification for the park's proposed ninth addition in Sonitpur district. Each step narrows the protected landscape. A trustee's decisions are read together, and read together these describe a steady contraction of the commons, not a neutral scientific refinement.

The Article 14 Asymmetry

On the park's fringe at Ingle Pathar, Adivasi and Tea Tribe families who say they have cultivated the land for generations have faced eviction to clear the way for a five-star hotel and heritage museum routed through the Assam Tourism Development Corporation. Several activists, including the land-rights campaigner Pranab Doley, were arrested in July 2026, drawing concern from United Nations experts. The full machinery of forest and encroachment law is deployed against cultivators of a few bighas. At the same moment the State proposes to relax the regulatory boundary in a way that smooths the path for multi-crore commercial projects on the same fringe. The standard applied to the powerless and the standard applied to the well-capitalised are not the same standard. Article 14 does not tolerate that kind of selective rigour, and the public trust is breached as much by what a trustee permits as by what it forbids.

What the High Court is Actually Being Asked?

This critique does not request the High Court to permanently freeze Kaziranga's boundary, nor does it argue that a one-kilometre limit can never be deemed lawful. Instead, it seeks a more specific and rigorous approach, i.e., the burden of proof must remain where the Vellore judgement established it. Scientific analysis must precede the demarcation of boundaries rather than merely ratify a predetermined decision. All relevant records and studies must be produced, and a protective environmental regime must not be dismantled by means of an interpretation of the Godavarman ruling that the Supreme Court never endorsed.

The default buffer represented the Court's principle of prioritizing protection in the face of scientific uncertainty. Repackaging a minimum standard as a maximum limit implies the exact opposite, suggesting a presumption in favor of development whenever commercial interests grow impatient. A World Heritage site, whose wildlife depends on extensive territorial movement during the flood season to survive, possesses a fundamentally stronger claim to the presumption of protection.

References

In re: T.N. Godavarman Thirumulpad v. Union of India, Order dated 3 June 2022. Available at: https://www.livelaw.in/pdf_upload/540-in-re-tn-godavarman-thirumalpad-v-union-of-india-3-june-2022-420775.pdf.

In re: T.N. Godavarman Thirumulpad v. Union of India, Order dated 26 April 2023. Available at: https://www.livelaw.in/pdf_upload/351-in-re-t-n-godavarman-thirumulpad-v-union-of-india-26-apr-2023-471218.pdf.

Supreme Court of India, T.N. Godavarman Thirumulpad v. Union of India, (1997) 2 SCC 267.

Supreme Court of India, T.N. Godavarman Thirumulpad v. Union of India, judgment available at: https://digiscr.sci.gov.in/admin/judgement_file/judgement_pdf/1996/Supp. (5)/Part I/S_1996_241-272_1702448483.pdf.

Ministry of Environment, Forest and Climate Change, Government of India, Eco-Sensitive Zone Notification concerning Kaziranga National Park and Tiger Reserve. Available at: https://cpc.parivesh.nic.in/writereaddata/ENV/Eco-sensitiveZone/25.pdf.

Government of India, official document concerning environmental protection and conservation. Available at: https://cdnbbsr.s3waas.gov.in/s380537a945c7aaa788ccfcdf1b99b5d8f/uploads/2024/07/20240716890312078.pdf.

'An International Law Principle of Non-Regression from Environmental Protections', International and Comparative Law Quarterly. Available at: https://www.cambridge.org/core/journals/international-and-comparative-law-quarterly/article/an-international-law-principle-of-nonregression-from-environmental-protections/DFB6236C0504491E00B4174EE6D13186.

Research article on environmental protection and water resources, International Journal of River Basin Management (2025). Available at: https://doi.org/10.1080/15715124.2025.2477161.

'An International Law Principle of Non-Regression from Environmental Protections', International and Comparative Law Quarterly. Available at: https://www.cambridge.org/core/journals/international-and-comparative-law-quarterly/article/an-international-law-principle-of-nonregression-from-environmental-protections/DFB6236C0504491E00B4174EE6D13186.

Research article on environmental protection and water resources, International Journal of River Basin Management (2025). Available at: https://doi.org/10.1080/15715124.2025.2477161.

Aaditya Bajpai, 'The Brahmaputra Floods: Assam's Unfinished Constitutional Promise' (LiveLaw, 16 Aug 2026). Available at: https://www.livelaw.in/articles/brahmaputra-floods-assam-unfinished-constitutional-promise-545978.

The Assam Tribune, 'Assam Moves to Shrink Kaziranga ESZ to 1 km, Says 10 km Zone Curbs Development'. Available at: https://assamtribune.com/assam/assam-moves-to-shrink-kaziranga-esz-to-1-km-says-10-km-zone-curbs-development-1615361.

The Assam Tribune, 'Assam Withdraws 2,570 Ha Kaziranga Expansion Amid Eco-Sensitive Zone Rollback'. Available at: https://assamtribune.com/assam/assam-withdraws-2570-ha-kaziranga-expansion-amid-eco-sensitive-zone-rollback-1581209.

The Logical Indian, report on Assam Chief Minister Himanta Biswa Sarma and the Kaziranga environmental controversy. Available at: https://thelogicalindian.com/assam-himanta-biswa-sarma-122240/.

Outlook India, 'Why Is Kaziranga's Eco-Sensitive Zone at Centre of 10 km vs 1 km Debate?' Available at: https://www.outlookindia.com/national/why-is-kazirangas-eco-sensitive-zone-at-centre-of-10-km-vs-1-km-debate.

The Wire, 'Kaziranga Rhinos, Assam, Brahmaputra Flood'. Available at: https://science.thewire.in/environment/kaziranga-rhinos-assam-brahmaputra-flood/.

The Wire, 'Elephant Corridor Near Kaziranga Remains Blocked Even After SC Order to Remove'. Available at: https://science.thewire.in/law/elephant-corridor-near-kaziranga-remains-blocked-even-after-sc-order-to-remove/.

The Wire, 'If You Want to Build a Five-Star Hotel, Build It on Your Own Land: Residents Oppose Kaziranga Hotel Project'. Available at: https://m.thewire.in/article/rights/if-you-want-to-build-a-five-star-hotel-build-it-on-your-own-land-residents-oppose-kaziranga-hotel-project/amp.

The Wire, 'Indigenous Rights Activist Pranab Doley Arrested over Hyatt Project in Ingle Pathar'. Available at: https://thewire.in/rights/indigenous-rights-activist-pranab-doley-arrested-hyatt-project-ingle-pathar.

Northeast Now, 'Kaziranga at Crossroads: A Shrinking ESZ, Expanding Tourism and Fight over Land'. Available at: https://nenow.in/environment/kaziranga-at-crossroads-a-shrinking-esz-expanding-tourism-and-fight-over-land.html.