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MUMBAI: “It is common sense that where there are coral reef , they need stagnant water. You are causing fairly irreversible damage to that part of the coast," said a bench of Chief Justice Pradeep Nandrajog and Justice Nitin Jamdar of Bombay high court on Friday while hearing a clutch of public interest litigation (PIL) against Mumbai’s coastal road (south) project sans any environmental impact assessment.

The chief justice observed, “This has to be justified…have to show how much damage will be caused…We have to track where did it all go wrong." His remarks came after hearing at length submissions by senior counsels Janak Dwarkadas and Gayatri Singh for activists who approached the HC against the rampant reclamation of the coast in south Mumbai for the project.

The project flies in the face of the environmental notifications over Coastal Regulation Zone (CRZ) and exceptions carved under it, Singh argued. The chief justice too questioned how the ‘exceptional circumstances’ were carved in the CRZ notification. The notification should have been worded differently like the Navi Mumbai airport notification so that it clearly stipulates that it does not apply to coastal road projects, since "roads are usually meant to be constructed on existing land" and here it requires reclamation.

The chief justice said civic counsel Darius “Khambata will now have to really struggle it out." Khambata will begin his submissions for the Brihan Mumbai Municipal corporation (BMC) on Monday. The BMC has brought in a heavyweight team of two former advocate generals, Khambata and SG Aney along with senior counsel Anil Sakhare, while for Maharashtra it is senior counsel Milind Sathe.

Petitioners Shweta Wagh, Worli fishermen, Conservation Action Trust, Vanashakti, Society for Improvement, Greenery and Nature (SIGN) slammed the Mumbai Coastal Road (South) project. Their main contention is that BMC is implementing the project with faulty, illegal green clearance accorded in May 2017 by the environment ministry. The project lacks a mandatory prior environmental clearance under the Environmental Impact Assessment Notification of 2006, said the activists to study the impact on eco-biodiversity of the Mumbai coast and its fragile ecosystem and also any proper public consultation.

The BMC, which says all permissions and environmental clearances are in place with two studies done on EIA and Social impact assessment , said it had given a map to the HC outlining the areas where reclamation was on.

Mumbai has suffered “resource exploitation" in the name of city planning with several creeks, rivers filled in, its mangroves getting cleared at an alarming rate, was what Wagh and Worli fishermen said.

Vanashakti counsel Zaman Ali argued that to ensure compliance with CRZ nod there needs to be a bio-diversity study which is not done here.

Singh questioned the validity of the Joint Technical Committee (JTC) report of 2011 and its recommendation pointing out that the panel did not comprise any environmental expert, yet it paved way for BMC commissioning the detailed project report for 30km of coastal road in two parts with 168 hectares of proposed reclamation. She also said the NIO report was flawed as it relies on only 14 days worth of pre-monsoon data. An EIA study requires impact in all four seasons to be studied and takes a year.

She said that it was pertinent to note that draft and final notifications for the project differed. While the draft amendment calling for objections included the phrase’ without affecting tidal flow of water’ the final one lacked this crucial protection.

