On Friday, the honourable Supreme Court held that the plea of Bombay Municipal Corporation which sought to simultaneously continue the Mumbai Coastal Road Construction project with other allied works has been granted.
The comment on the submitted plea was made by Senior Advocate Colin Gonsalves who contended that the ongoing road construction project with other allied projects will accelerate the intensity of climate change and damage the already distorted environmental equilibrium.
The latest order of the apex court has been pronounced on the pending appeal filed by the Municipal Corporation against the verdict of Bombay High Court given in July 2019. The order stopped the work of the coastal road construction due to lack of sufficient environmental clearances.
However, the Supreme Court in December 2019 stayed the verdict of Bombay High Court and refused to allow the project in totality but restricted the same to the road construction work. The same was reiterated through the order of October 2020.
Opinion of the Bench
The bench deciding the plea of Municipal Corporation constituted of Justice D.Y. Chandrachud and Justice Hima Kohli.
The bench opined that due to the fear of climate change and other related losses, the developmental works cannot be negotiated. The negotiation between the growth and development of the people, especially rural ones and the effects of climate change is hard to make.
Justice Chandrachud in his humble opinion put forward that in order to remove poverty, greater urbanisation is needed and the court simply cannot disallow developmental projects on the pretext that they are a nuisance to the climate.
In the same alignment, the bench accepted plea and gave permission for laying out gardens, parking spaces, laying of cycle tracks and others, on the condition to follow the Coastal Regulation Zone guidelines.
The bench discarded the contention of Advocate Gonsalves, representing an NGO who contended that the road construction projects and other developmental works will cause climate change and block tidal waters. To this, the bench opined that, it is not the responsibility of only developing nations to curtail the consequences of climate change, the pollution caused by developed nations is equally important while considering the threat of environmental disequilibrium.
The opinion of the bench, on one hand is rational keeping in view the development of the Indian states while on other hand has raised serious questions over the incessant increase of the climate change instances and related issues. The debate over development which came by neglecting environmental concerns and the environmental crisis we are currently facing, is omnipresent and no one escaped from its hold. Following the middle path is good for a short time, but in the long run, we have to jeopardize our needs and ambitions.
