COVID-19 AS A BOON OR BANE FOR ENVIRONMENT: A SOCIO-LEGAL STUDY Pyali CHATTERJEE  Abstract Even after 2 years of a pandemic, the entire world is struggling to cope with the negative impact of COVID -19 on human life and the world economy. Within these 2 years, many human lives were affected. Even there is no actual accurate data to show how many people lost their lives due to COVID-19. Before COVID-19 one of the major concerns of the entire world was environmental pollution. When the COVID-19 hit the world the concern of every country was how to control the situation and mortality rate due to COVID as it can be deadly in those countries where air pollution is already high. Dr. Bernstein, in the study conducted by Harvard, stated that “In places where air pollution is a chronic problem, we have to pay particular attention to individuals who may be more exposed or vulnerable than others to polluted air, such as the homeless and those with chronic medical problems. These individuals may need more support than they did even before coronavirus came along.” COVID-19 was not only the issue that was a concern for everyone but another issue related to it was how to improve the air quality. In several studies, it was proved that it can be more deadly for the polluted countries where the people are already suffering from various airborne diseases as they will be more prone to COVID -19. That was the concern and situation for all countries to stop spreading these deadly diseases and to improve the air quality also for further spreading of COVID-19. The researcher through this research will discuss the actual reasons for the spreading of the COVID-19 and also about the reasons behind the high mortality rate with the help of the scientific data and also about the truth of its preexistence (coronavirus) before 2019. Also, researcher will discuss the positive as well as the negative impact of COVID-19 on the environment. Keywords: Covid-19, pandemic, environment pollution, population, air pollution JEL Classification: [K32] 1. Introduction Now in mid-2022, Covid-19 has become a part of our life. In 2019 when for the first time it was reported no one ever imagined the situation and loss it was going to cause to human life. It was in December 2019 when for the first time the disease caused by the novel coronavirus was reported in Wuhan city of China. Subsequently, the virus was named SARS-CoV-2. This for the fifth time the world has witnessed the pandemic after the 1918 Spanish flu (Liu, Kuo, and Shih, 2020). Covid-19 patients were having influenza-like symptoms like fever along with respiratory symptoms, headache, and in severe cases, they required  Assistant Professor, Faculty of Law, ICFAI University, Raipur, Chattisgarh, India, 492006.