Bombay high court

MUMBAI: In a victory for environmentalists, the Bombay high court has allowed their petition against the Mumbai coastal road .

The HC has held that the Coastal Road work has been proceeding without requisite permissions. It also quashed the CRZ permission and held that an Environmental Clearance (EC) was mandatory. The HC said that no further work can be done by BMC on this coastal road project.

Earlier last month at the hearing, a bench of Chief Justice Pradeep Nandrajog and Justice Nitin Jamdar had said, "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." The HC judgement comes in a clutch of public interest litigation (PIL) against proceeding with Mumbai’s coastal road (south) project sans any environmental impact assessment.

The Chief Justice had earlier 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 had come 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.

Special civic counsel Darius Khambata sought a stay but the bench said, "How can we give a stay?"

BrihanMumbai Municipal corporation (BMC) had brought in a heavy weight team of two former advocate generals, Khambata and S G 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.

The HC ruling mean that the coastal road project lacks the required clearances in law and hence is illegal.

