Environment (Protection) Act Section 15: Penalties (2026)

Explainer · Environmental Law · India

Updated for 2026 · Claw Editorial

Section 15 of the Environment (Protection) Act, 1986 is the penalty section. It says what happens when a person or company fails to comply with the Act, its rules, or a direction issued under it. The important change is recent. The Jan Vishwas (Amendment of Provisions) Act, 2023 recast the penalty provisions. For most breaches, imprisonment has been removed and replaced with a monetary penalty, decided not by a criminal court but by an adjudicating officer appointed by the Central Government. An appeal against that order goes to the National Green Tribunal. This explainer sets out what Section 15 now says, how the penalty is fixed, and how to challenge it. Last verified October 2026.

01What changed, in one line

Until 2023, breaking the Environment (Protection) Act could land a person in jail for up to five years. The Jan Vishwas (Amendment of Provisions) Act, 2023 removed that imprisonment for most contraventions and turned Section 15 into a money penalty, decided by a government adjudicating officer rather than a criminal court.

02What Section 15 now says

Section 15 provides that whoever fails to comply with, or contravenes, any provision of the Act, or the rules, orders or directions made under it, is liable to a monetary penalty. The amount is fixed by the adjudicating officer within the limits set by the section.

• Penalty: a penalty that may extend to about Rs 15 lakh for a contravention.
• Continuing breach: an additional penalty for every day the contravention continues after the first.
• Higher exposure for companies and departments: the Act provides larger penalties where the violator is a company or a government department.

The penalty amounts are read with the connected provisions the amendment inserted, which also deal with the adjudicating officer, the appeal, and crediting the penalty to an Environmental Protection Fund.

03How the penalty is decided

The penalty is not imposed automatically. The Central Government appoints an adjudicating officer, a senior official, to hold an inquiry and decide the amount. The officer must give the person a reasonable chance to be heard before passing an order.

In fixing the penalty, the officer weighs factors written into the law, including the population and the area affected, how long and how often the breach went on, how vulnerable the affected people are, and any gain the violator made from the breach. This is meant to make the penalty match the harm rather than be a flat figure.

04The appeal to the NGT

If you disagree with the adjudicating officer's order, you can appeal. The appeal lies to the National Green Tribunal (NGT), and the usual period to file it is 60 days from the order. From the NGT, a further appeal lies to the Supreme Court.

This is the dispute layer that matters in practice. The NGT already hears most environmental matters, so a penalty order, a closure direction or a consent dispute can all end up before the same tribunal. For how the tribunal works, see NGT procedure in India, and to follow matters there see case search in the National Green Tribunal. Penalty orders often run alongside a consent dispute, covered in how to get consent to operate from the pollution board.

05Old law versus new law

The shape of the provision changed a great deal in 2023.

The move from jail to a penalty is a deliberate decriminalisation. Supporters say it speeds up enforcement; critics say it can weaken deterrence for serious polluters.

06A note on enforcement

A penalty regime only works if someone is appointed to run it. In October 2024 the Supreme Court observed that Section 15 had been left "toothless" because the government had not yet set up the machinery, the adjudicating officers and the rules, to actually impose the new penalties, and it pressed the Centre to put that machinery in place.

So the law on paper and the law in practice can differ by the date and the state. If you are facing or raising an environmental complaint, check whether the adjudicating officer and rules are in force for your situation, because an older breach may still be dealt with under the earlier provisions.

07Where Claw fits

Claw is an all-in-one legaltech platform for Indian advocates, law firms, and corporate legal teams, combining AI-based case search, an AI legal assistant (Legal GPT), case management, and compliance automation across all Indian courts and tribunals.

An environmental penalty rarely stands alone. It runs with NGT appeals, writ petitions in the High Court, closure or consent disputes with the pollution board, and sometimes a Supreme Court appeal, and the next date in each can be easy to miss. Claw tracks cases, orders and hearings across 9,102 courts, benches and forums, including the NGT and the High Courts, so you can follow a penalty or appeal by party or advocate name. You can also search more than 30 crore judgments, with Supreme Court rulings from 1950 and High Court rulings from 1990, to see how tribunals and courts have treated similar breaches and fixed penalties, with results in under 5 seconds.

Claw does not use the documents you upload to train its AI models. Create a free Claw account to track an NGT appeal or a writ against a penalty order and follow every hearing, and use case search across Indian courts to read across the wider body of environmental law.

08Sources and further reading

• Ministry of Environment, Forest and Climate Change: moef.gov.in
• India Code (Environment (Protection) Act, 1986 and the Jan Vishwas Act, 2023): indiacode.nic.in
• PRS Legislative Research (Jan Vishwas Act analysis): prsindia.org
• Claw: clawlaw.in

This explainer is general information, not legal advice. The penalty figures, the rules and the enforcement machinery are still settling after the 2023 amendment, so check the current text and take advice from counsel before you act.

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