A public interest litigation (PIL) petition has been filed before the Punjab and Haryana High Court challenging guidelines issued in January 2023 on the extraction and conservation of groundwater in Punjab.
In the context of groundwater, where there are multiple stakeholders with differentiated but real interests in using and conserving this precious resource, merely legislating or regulating in a traditional way (top-down approach) may not be the answer. Therefore, lawmakers in Punjab may experiment with negotiated rulemaking in which the stakeholders and the rights holders play a key role in drafting the proposed regulation