India does not have to borrow right to know from anywhere. Courts here have used Articles 19(1)(a) and 21 for decades to compel disclosure from manufacturers who would rather have avoided, from what a soft drink contains to whether a snack is vegetarian. The E20 controversy poses the question whether that same right reaches the fuel every vehicle owner must now buy. It rose through a dispute over what the government's own counsel had actually told the Court.

During the hearing of a Special Leave Petition before the Supreme Court filed by Bharat Petroleum Corporation Limited over the allocation of ethanol to a distillery following a Karnataka High Court order, Attorney General R. Venkataramani was reported to have described the government's 20% ethanol-blending E20 programme as an “experiment”. The Attorney General's Office initially denied making any such remark stating that no such argument had been included in its response and that media reports had misrepresented the arguments actually made in court. Venkataramani later clarified saying he had used the term experiment in reference to ethanol supply and not in relation to the E20 policy. What does the government owe consumers who are practically compelled to use a fuel blend mandated by executive decision rather than legislation? That question now unfolds across three matters; the BPCL petition, Akshay Malhotra's dismissed PIL and Narender Kumar Goswami's pending disclosure petition. Together they mark a shift from asking courts to revisit the policy rather than asking them to enforce what it owes consumers regardless of the policy's merits.

The First Round: Malhotra and the Doctrine of Policy Deference

It is not the first time that the controversy related to E20 scheme has come up before the courts. In August 2025, Advocate Akshay Malhotra moved a Public Interest Litigation before the Supreme Court seeking a direction to the fuel stations to ensure availability of ethanol-free petrol for old, non-complying vehicles along with mandatory ethanol content labelling at fuel stations. The litigation was based on a 2021 NITI Aayog report which raised concerns of inefficiency, corrosion and wear-and-tear of engines manufactured before E20 implementation. A bench led by Chief Justice B.R. Gavai and Justice K. Vinod Chandran dismissed the petition on September 1, 2025, treating the ethanol-blending programme as part of a broader national strategy on energy security and sustainability. The Attorney General went further describing the petitioner as a name-lender for an organised lobby. Having accepted the government's account of the policy's rationale in full, the Court never engaged with the relief actually sought labelling and consumer choice.

This position aligns with well-established precedent in which courts decline to interfere with economic and technical policy, from BALCO Employees Union (Regd.) v. Union of India, 2001 INSC 601 to the environmental-policy deference in Narmada Bachao Andolan v. Union of India, 2000 INSC 489. Judicial review of policy is available on grounds of manifest arbitrariness or constitutional infirmity, not a court's own view of whether a different policy would serve the public better. Read narrowly, Malhotra was not an endorsement of E20's technical safety it was a refusal to treat technical safety as a question courts are equipped to answer. Labelling and consumer choice were left unaddressed on their own terms, not resolved against the petitioner.

The Second Round: Goswami and the Reframing Around Consent

The newest petition before the Supreme Court, filed by Advocate Narender Kumar Goswami, does not repeat that mistake of asking the Court to re litigate the policy. The petition explicitly disclaims any challenge to the ethanol-blending programme or to the underlying objective of energy self-reliance. Instead it recasts the grievance in constitutional terms that the Malhotra bench never had to confront the absence of disclosure and informed choice. This change modifies the jurisdiction of the court in that the court now moves away from challenging the wisdom of the policy, something that Malhotra says courts will not entertain. It bases its review on the narrow issue of administrative mistakes such as arbitrary actions, lack of due process, or violation of legal rights. Since such cases only concern themselves with procedural issues, it allows the court to intervene without judging the policy.

The petitioners claiming to be the owners of pre-E20 vehicles observe that fuel pumps have no marking of ethanol content, invoices disclose nothing, and consumers have no alternative. The petition seeks mandatory disclosure of the ethanol percentage a vehicle-wise compatibility database, protection of warranty and insurance rights of consumers and a national consumer disclosure protocol. In addition, it also seeks formation of an expert committee to study compatibility, durability, and food and water security concerns, matters no court could resolve on its own. The argument is not that the Court should balance energy security against consumer convenience, but whether the government can pursue a legitimate objective through what the petition calls “administrative silence.” That brings the case closer to the Consumer Protection Act, 2019, than to non-justiciable economic policy landscape which defeated the Malhotra petition.

Why Disclosure Is the Stronger Legal Ground

Comparative practice reinforces this approach. In the case of the US, E10/E15 blend rates come with a mandatory labelling regime as per the EPA¹ and FTC² regulations, which would provide the consumers with information about the amount of ethanol in the blend and the vehicle compatibility of the fuel although blending itself is not an issue being litigated. The case of Brazil is slightly different where the regulator has since 2011 obliged the fuel to be labeled ethanol rather than the more ambiguous alcohol³. Yet the underlying theory behind both approaches is identical in nature in terms of separation of disclosure from blending and how transitioning to higher blends is not an excuse to drop the labeling requirements. It is pertinent to note that the Indian regulatory framework itself acknowledges this principle in other spheres of life nutritional labeling of packaged food products, fuel economy labeling of automobiles and disclosure obligations as per the Legal Framework.

A Right to Know That Already Exists in Indian Law

The argument does not have to borrow from foreign practice to find its footing. In Santosh Mittal v. State of Rajasthan, 2005(1)WLC52 the Rajasthan High Court held that Articles 19(1)(a) and 21 obliged beverage manufacturers to disclose the pesticide content of their products, since a consumer paying for a commercial product was entitled to know what it contained. The reasoning traces to State of U.P. v. Raj Narain, 1975 INSC 14, where the Supreme Court first held that the right to know flows from Article 19(1)(a), and that secrecy in routine matters affecting the public can seldom be legitimately claimed. If a soft-drink manufacturer can be compelled to disclose what is in the bottle, a government mandating a fuel blend can be compelled to disclose what is in the tank, and to publish the compatibility data that allows an owner to know what that blend costs their vehicle.

What makes the petition compelling is not some new piece of information but rather an old piece of information that is applied to a new product, as the information being sought by way of the petition is not information that needs to be created by the government, but rather information that needs to be released or required at the pump. Deference to policy as it relates to “why” ethanol blending should occur does not alone answers “how” this occurs, especially when it comes to consumer rights.

None of this guarantee Goswami will succeed, or even be heard on similar terms as Malhotra. The stance of the government that blending ethanol helps farmers, saves foreign exchange, and fulfills the climate commitment of India won't change and the BPCL hearing controversy will only make the government more careful about the matter. However, what the Court needs to distinguish here is whether that explanation of policy justifies non-disclosure. If it dismisses this case, it doesn't mean the dismissal of Malhotra the policy remains intact there. If it dismisses this case, then it will mean that the Court considers non-disclosure another discretionary power of the executive branch.

The E20 dispute follows a common pattern in Indian public law. A petition broad enough to invite dismissal in deference to policy, followed by a tighter one built around the loophole the first left open. Whether the Supreme Court sees the case of Goswami as simply another attempt to reopen an already-decided matter or on its own merits will decide something larger than one case. whether India's shift to ethanol is made transparent to its citizens in the same way that everything else is supposed to be, or whether it carries on under the idea that policy legitimacy is an answer to something that they have always had the right to know.

References

1. U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, “E15 Fuel Dispenser Labeling and Compatibility With Underground Storage Tanks,” Federal Register.

2. Federal Trade Commission, “Complying with the FTC Fuel Rating Rule,” 16 CFR Part 306.

3. ANP (Agencia Nacional do Petroleo, Gas Natural e Biocombustiveis), Resolution on fuel labelling (2011), Brazil.

Author Parul Shukla is an Assistant Professor of Law at Marwadi University, Rajkot, Gujarat & Bijendra Shandilya is a final-year Law student at Indian Institute Of Management, Rohtak (IIM-R). Views are personal.