The Supreme Court (SC) has upheld the need for strong environmental safeguards in Pune's Balbharati-Paud Phata (BBPP) Road project. The apex court directed that a fresh Environmental Impact Assessment (EIA) and Environmental Clearance (EC) must be obtained before proceeding with the project.
This order came in response to an appeal filed against the Bombay High Court’s February 2025 judgment in the case of Sushma Date and Sumita Kale vs. Pune Municipal Corporation (PMC).
PMC Admits HCMTR Project Has Been Abandoned
During the SC hearing held on October 29, the PMC made a significant disclosure stating that the High-Capacity Mass Transit Route (HCMTR) project has been abandoned.
The statement was made by Solicitor General of India Tushar Mehta and PMC counsel Abhijit Kulkarni, representing the civic body before the SC. However, activists and citizens expressed surprise, as the HCMTR continues to remain notified in Pune’s Development Plan (DP).
The Case:
It stems from a long legal fight to protect the Vetal Tekdi ecosystem from urban projects, which plays a crucial role in maintaining the city’s biodiversity and groundwater recharge zones.
During the proceedings, the PMC had argued that environmental clearance was not required for the BBPP Road. However, the SC overruled this stance, mandating a full, four-season EIA and fresh clearance from the State Environmental Impact Assessment Authority (SEIAA) before any work can begin on the project.
“Despite PMC’s declaration, no official resolution or deletion process has been initiated under the Maharashtra Regional and Town Planning (MRTP) Act to formally remove the project from the city’s planning documents,” claim the citizens.
“The Supreme Court actually spent a lot of time understanding the issue, and it has now validated how the tekdi is important for the citizens of Pune. PMC is always trying to ignore it and brush it under the carpet. We demand that PMC delete HCMTR from the Development Plan, as they have mentioned in court that it has been abandoned as per the MRTP Act. This is a victory for Pune’s natural heritage,” said Dr Sumita Kale, a concerned citizen.
“The SC order reaffirms the ecological value of the Law College slope of Vetal Tekdi, and the PMC has a constitutional duty under Articles 48(A) and 21 to protect Pune’s green cover and natural water systems,” said Dr Kale.
The HCMTR project was first conceived as a mass-transit, 35 km inner ring road for Pune city in the 1987 Development Plan and notified again in the 2007 DP by the State Government in 2017, when its cost was estimated to be between ₹5,000 and ₹8,000 crore. In June 2024, the State Government approved a revised plan of the HCMTR with modifications in the alignment under Section 37(2) of the MRTP Act.
"Two km of the 35 km ring road are aligned over the proposed BBPP road through Law College Hill in an ecologically sensitive urban forest. HCMTR is one of the three destructive projects planned on Vetal Tekdi, the other two being the Balbharti road and the two tunnels. Hence, it was a pleasant surprise to hear PMC counsel Abhijit Kulkarni submit to the highest court of India that the project had been ‘abandoned’ by the PMC. The SC bench has referred to this submission in point 12 of its order. If the ₹5,000 crore project has indeed been abandoned, then PMC must start the process of deleting it from the Development Plan in accordance with the MRTP Act. Whichever way, scrapping this ill-planned, 35 km elevated road through the heart of the city, and along a hill slope that contains an urban forest and aquifers that recharge Pune’s groundwater, will be a big relief for the city,” said Dr Sushma Date, one of the petitioners in the case.
Environmental groups and citizens have welcomed the verdict as a landmark victory for urban accountability and ecological protection, and have called on PMC to come clean about the status of both the HCMTR and the BBPP projects and to ensure that misleading representations in court or the media are corrected.
Meanwhile, Aniruddh Pawaskar, Head of Road department, PMC, said, "The lawyer said 'in abeyance' and not 'abandoned' and the project is just temporarily on hold. The priority studies are done, we were about to take up the Environmental Clearance (EC), and that now becomes the immediate priority. We had floated around 4–5 tenders for HCMTR project worth Rs 5,300 crore, which came up by 75 per cent, and the lowest came in nearly 45% higher, at about ₹10,000 crore. The proposed 36-km ring road has only a small 2-km overlapping portion, of which about 600 metres is elevated. The 35 km inner ring road is a highly capital-intensive project. The order now is to work out on how PMC can raise the necessary funds and focus immediately on developing the road. Detailed planning for that will have to be worked out.”
