New Delhi, April 19 -- A rising nation like India cannot allow its development goals to compromise clean air, clean water and a liveable future for every citizen, said Chief Justice of India (CJI) Surya Kant on Saturday as he underlined that environmental protection and economic progress cannot be treated as binary choices under the Indian Constitution. Speaking at an international conference in Bengaluru on "Sustainable Energy: An Agenda for India @ 2047", CJI said that Article 21 which guarantees the Right to Life under our Constitution includes both right to development and right to clean environment and courts should see to it that environmental protection is integrated as the foundation of every development, rather than an afterthought. "Energy Justice is not an alien concept imported from the developed world. It is the moral architecture that allows a rising nation, such as ours, to grow without compromising what belongs to every citizen: clean air, clean water, and a liveable future," said CJI, addressing a speech on the topic: "Reimagining Law, Policy, and Innovation for Energy Justice". India is home to hundreds of millions of people whose energy demand is in constant rise. He said, "As a nation, we are still very much on our development journey, and therefore, we cannot afford to treat environmental protection and economic progress as a binary choice." "The very genius of our constitutional framework lies in its insistence that development and environmental protection must proceed together, that one cannot be sacrificed at the altar of the other... our constitutional design places both the right to development and the right to a clean environment within the expansive canvas of Article 21." In a separate event organised at Vidhana Soudha, Bengaluru, CJI gave the inaugural address at a gathering to commemorate the Karnataka Lokayukta's four-decade old journey. Underlining the importance of accountability and transparency in a democracy, CJI said, "Democracy does not weaken when authority is examined. It weakens when authority becomes invisible. Systems that make governance understandable and within the reach of the people play a vital role in sustaining democratic life."...