Through the Reader lens — India’s Supreme Court quashed a July 2021 Ministry of Environment memorandum that had allowed post-facto Environmental Clearances to be granted via administrative orders. The Court ruled that such regularisation of past environmental violations must be done through statutory notification, not executive fiat, though it left open a legislative route for future clearances. The ruling directly enables the continuation of three major infrastructure projects that had been caught in regulatory limbo. Neutral coverage from Hindustan Times and The Hindu emphasises the procedural shift rather than the projects themselves, noting the Court barred memoranda of this kind while preserving Parliament’s authority to regularise through statute. The decision narrows the Centre’s discretion to bypass environmental law via circulars and sets a precedent on the separation between executive orders and statutory rule-making. Watch for whether the Ministry moves to notify the rule, and what happens to other pending post-facto clearance applications across sectors.