Can a statutory cap on compensation override the constitutional courts' power to award just compensation for a legal tort? Discuss with reference to the SHANTI Act, 2025.

The SHANTI Act, 2025, which repealed the Atomic Energy Act, 1962 and the Civil Liability for Nuclear Damage Act, 2010, caps operator liability on a graded scale of ₹100–3,000 crore [1]. Whether such a legislative ceiling can bind constitutional courts is now before the Supreme Court, which issued notice to the Union and the AERB in August 2026 [3].

The statutory scheme under SHANTI

• Graded caps by plant capacity replace the flat ₹1,500 crore ceiling of 2010, with an overall limit of 300 million SDR per incident [1][2].
• No-fault operator liability is retained, but the operator's right of recourse against suppliers of defective equipment is removed [1].
• The Act aligns India with the Convention on Supplementary Compensation (1997) and opens nuclear generation to private and foreign participation [1][2].

The case for capping

• Insurability: unlimited exposure is uninsurable; a defined cap lets insurance pools and vendors price risk, enabling capacity addition.
• Speed: channelling all claims to the operator on a no-fault basis delivers quick relief without proving negligence.
• Fiscal certainty: the State's residual burden through the Nuclear Liability Fund stays bounded [2].

Why a cap cannot oust the constitutional court

• Articles 32 and 226 are part of the basic structure (Kesavananda Bharati; L. Chandra Kumar); ordinary law cannot extinguish remedial jurisdiction.
• Absolute liability (M.C. Mehta, 1987) makes a hazardous enterprise's liability non-delegable and geared to its capacity to pay.
• Public law compensation is a constitutional tort remedy (Nilabati Behera, 1993), independent of statutory ceilings.
• Fukushima-scale losses vastly exceeded caps of this order [2]; Bhopal showed settled sums falling short of actual damage.

Caps and jurisdiction are therefore complementary, not competing: the statutory ceiling fixes an assured, immediate, no-fault entitlement, while the constitutional court remains the residual guarantor where proven damage exceeds it. A deeper Nuclear Liability Fund, a wider insurance pool and a demonstrably independent statutory AERB [1] would ensure that Article 21's right to life is not traded away for investment certainty.