In a judgment aimed at reconciling the need to protect the critically endangered Great Indian Bustard (GIB) with India’s clean energy push, the Supreme Court has laid out a two-year roadmap mandating the undergrounding and rerouting of power lines in Rajasthan and Gujarat.

Delivering its final verdict in the GIB case, a two-judge bench of the apex court accepted several recommendations made by a committee comprising wildlife and power sector experts. It said the Ministry of Environment must monitor the rollout of the outlined measures.

The judgment ends a six-year legal process that began with a writ petition seeking directions to arrest the GIB’s dwindling population, as the birds were dying from collisions with overhead power transmission lines. Several solar and wind projects in the two renewable energy-rich states were stranded due to the prohibitive cost of undergrounding the lines.

The verdict is seen as providing greater regulatory certainty for solar and wind developers to plan for projects in the two states.

No-go Areas Slashed

Disposing of the writ petition, the Supreme Court said that the revised priority area (core GIB habitat) for Rajasthan and Gujarat will cover 14,013 sq km and 740 sq km, respectively, as recommended by the expert committee. The order also applies to the habitat of the Lesser Florican, also a critically endangered species.

The priority area has been significantly reduced from the 99,000 sq km (priority and potential GIB habitat) in the 2021 order. The Court modified its order in 2024, observing that there was no basis to impose a general prohibition regarding the installation of transmission lines for the distribution of solar power in such a large area.

Putting a bar on solar and wind energy projects above 2 MW in the core areas, it said, “The measures recommended by the committee for in-situ and ex-situ conservation of GIB within the priority areas of Rajasthan and Gujarat shall be implemented forthwith.”

It directed that 250 km of existing high-risk transmission lines identified by the Wildlife Institute of India (WII) must be undergrounded or rerouted within two years.

Among other key directives are the immediate undergrounding of 80 km of 33 kV lines in Rajasthan, and the undergrounding/rerouting/insulating cables of the remaining 24 km to be identified by the WII and the Rajasthan Forest Department (RFD) within three months.

It also directed the rerouting of specific existing 66 kV and above lines in the revised priority area of Rajasthan to be carried out in a time-bound manner.

All 11 kV and below lines must be mitigated using insulated cables in a horizontal configuration or with bunching.

In cases where dedicated lines originate from different renewable energy projects and pooling stations and terminate at a common grid pooling station, the routes must be optimized to share the maximum common stretch.

Power Corridor

The Court accepted the expert committee’s recommendation to create a power corridor up to 5 km wide, located at least 5 km south of the southern-most enclosure of the Desert National Park in Rajasthan. The corridor coordinates are to be proposed by the RFD and WII.

In Gujarat, the power corridor will be up to 2 km wide.

If feasible, high-capacity high-voltage direct current corridors must be adopted to reduce the number of lines required to carry the same quantum of power. No new powerlines will be allowed in the priority areas except through a dedicated corridor. No new wind turbines or solar parks/plants with a capacity of more than 2 MW would be allowed within the priority area.

Bird Flight Diverters

The Supreme Court noted that the expert committee had not recommended the use of Bird Flight Diverters (BFD) as a mitigation measure due to unproven efficacy and the high cost of installation and maintenance.

The committee has said that the ongoing WII study to assess the effectiveness of BFDs in reducing bird collision mortality with power lines should be conducted within a year (or an additional year or two years).

The Court said the competent authority will engage with the issue of BFDs and take appropriate action, based on scientific analysis, for their deployment.

Corporate Social Responsibility

The apex court also broadened the scope of corporate social responsibility (CSR) by saying that it should inherently include ‘environmental responsibility.’  Companies cannot claim to be socially responsible while ignoring the equal claims of the environment and other beings in the ecosystem.

“Consequently, allocating funds for the protection of the environment is not a voluntary act of charity but a fulfillment of a constitutional obligation. Where corporate activities such as mining, power generation, or infrastructure threaten the habitat of endangered species, the “Polluter Pays” principle mandates that the company bears the cost of species recovery.”

It said CSR funds must be directed towards ex situ and in situ conservation efforts to prevent the extinction of endangered wildlife.