The Supreme Court on Tuesday junked the plea filed against the Char Dham Project in Uttarakhand by Citizens for Green Doon and six others and allowed the Ministry of Defence to widen the three strategic highways, under the supervision of its former judge, Justice Arjan Kumar Sikri, who had retired in March 2019.
A 3-judge Bench of Justices D Y Chandrachud, Surya Kant and Vikram Nath accepted the MoD arguments on the necessity to widen the roads in view of the security concerns on the borders with China.
"We allow the application by the Defence Ministry for double lanes in the three strategic highways," the court ordered.
"We find there are no mala fides in the application filed by the MoD, which is authorized to oversee the operational requirement of armed forces. The bonafides of the MoD is apparent from security concerns raised in security committee meeting," the court said in an 83-page judgment authored by Justice Chandrachud.
"This court, in its exercise of judicial review, cannot second guess the requirements of army," the Bench said, adding that it cannot also question the policy decision of the government.
It, however, did not brush aside the environmental concerns raised by a High Powered Committee (HPC), while noting that the best practices were not adopted by the government in some places during construction.
"The panel has also noted the harm in some areas and has suggested remedies to reduce the impact," the court said.
Environmental impact of these roads cannot be any less important here, the Bench made it clear, accepting the concerns of Citizens for Green Doon; it has further said that the HPC recommendations on environmental concerns have to be followed and that it will continue to oversee the work.
The Bench has also set up an oversight committee headed by Justice Sikri to oversee the project with respect to the three highways and report to the court directly.
"The oversight committee shall ensure that recommendations of the panel are implemented and there is no fresh analysis. If any breach takes place, the chairman of the committee can approach this court," the court directed.
The HPC felt that "to meet the defence requirements, it is essential that disaster-resilient roads be built, instead of disaster-prone roads.’’
The court noted that the national highways from Rishikesh to Mana, Rishikesh to Gangotri, and Tanakpur to Pithoragarh act as feeder roads to the Indo-China border and have strategic importance that cannot be ignored.
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