Mumbai: The Bombay High Court, while scrapping the Coastal Regulation Zone (CRZ) clearances to the city civic body’s ambitious Coastal Road project, noted that the authorities ignored the ongoing construction of Metro rail in Mumbai.
The HC said the authorities could have had considered the fact that the Metro network would run parallel to the proposed coastal road.
A bench of Chief Justice Pradeep Nandrajog and Justice Nitin Jamdar scrapped the project after noting that the authorities did not pay any heed to the Metro projects of the city.
In its 219-page judgment, the bench noted that the Maharashtra Coastal Zone Management Authority (MCZMA) and the Ministry of Environment and Forest (MoEF) could have not granted the permission to reclaim land, given the fact that Metro would be a parallel mode of transport for the city.
“Both MCZMA and MoEF have not taken into account, in spite of being informed, that the Metro Rail Project in Mumbai was under construction and the Metro Network to be constructed would run parallel to the proposed coastal road. It was covering the entire South-North of the city,” the judges noted.
The bench further said that the authorities ought to have had considered the impact of the metro rail network in ferrying commuters in the city. “The impact of the Metro of being able to transport commuters was extremely necessary and important (by the authorities), keeping in mind that the reclamation of land to construct a coastal road is permitted only in an exceptional case,” CJ Nandrajog said.
The CJ further said, “As opined by us, to determine whether a case was an exceptional case warranted the same to be considered from the point of view of a crying need of the city bordering the dying need.”
The judges further said that though the coastal road project was a singular one but the authorities erred in dividing it into two components for assessing its impact on the environment.
“The coastal road was proposed to not only decongest the interior roads of the city but even provide a freeway between the northern and the southern part of the city.
Conceptually and factually it was a singular project and thus, adverse environmental impact had to be determined for the project as a whole and not to artificially break the project into two components merely because there was a Sea-link in between,” CJ Nandrajog pointed out.
The court further observed, “This would result in a truncated environment impact assessment to be made. The precautionary principle applicable to environmental jurisprudence does not recognize such approach to be adopted.”
