give a brief explanation on how is"right to water" a fundamental right
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Under fundamental rights in the Constitution of India, Article 21 entitled ‘protection of life and personal liberty’ ‘no person shall be deprived of his life or personal liberty except according to procedure established by law’. This has popularly come to be known as Article on ‘right to life’. In view of the scope of this right, environmental, ecological, air and water pollution gets violated in Article 21 of the constitution of India. Further, ‘the entitlement of citizens to receive safe drinking water (potable water) is part of the right to life under Article 21. As early as in 1984 (in Bandhua Mukti Morcha vs. Union of India case), the Supreme Court derived the concept of right to ‘healthy environment’ as part of the ‘right to life’ under Article 21. The Court, in a recent judgment (1 December 2000), had observed that ‘in today’s emerging jurisprudence, environmental rights which encompass a group of collective rights are described as “third generation” rights’. An important ruling of the Indian Supreme Court was the case of A.P. Pollution Control Board II v. Prof. M.V. Nayudu. In this case, the AP government had granted an exemption to a polluting industry and allowed it to be set up near two main reservoirs in Andhra Pradesh – the Himayat Sagar Lake and the Osman Sagar lake, in violation of the Environment Protection Act 1986. The Supreme Court struck down such exemption and held that the “Environment Protection Act and The Water (Prevention and Control of Pollution) Act 1974 did not enable to the State to grant exemption to a particular industry within the area prohibited for location of polluting industries.”
The Court recently reiterated again that ‘the right to access to clean drinking water is fundamental to life and there is a duty on the state under Article 21 to provide clean drinking water to its citizens’. The State is duty bound not only to provide adequate drinking water but also to protect water sources from pollution and encroachment. Any act of the State that allows pollution of water body ‘must be treated as arbitrary and contrary to public interest and in violation of the right to clean water under Article 21’