Apex court seeks response on green ‘damage’ at Aarey PARSI PETITION AGAINST TUNNEL: HEARING ON MON
CAR SHED ROW Metro corporation says yet to receive SC notice MUMBAI:
The apex court on Friday issued a notice to the Mumbai Metro Rail Corporation Ltd (MMRCL) and the state government in the Mumbai Metro car shed case, which has come upon 33 hectares of land at Aarey Colony in Goregaon.
A bench of justices Madan Lokur and Deepak Gupta took cognisance of the environmental damage caused to Aarey Colony by the project and asked the respondents to get back to the court within six weeks. Until then, the work at the car shed will continue.
The petitioners had filed a special leave petition in Supreme Court (SC) against the Bombay high court (HC) order of justices SC Dharmadhikari and PD Naik, in which the HC refused to declare Aarey a forest.
“We showed satellite images of the site to show the extent of damage caused at Aarey, and the bench is convinced that there is merit in the case. So the matter would come up for hearing again in January,” said environmental lawyer Zaman Ali, who is representing the petitioners, one of whom is Mumbai resident Amrita Bhattacharjee.
Bhattacharjee has challenged the government’s 2017 notification through which the green patch inside Aarey Colony has been removed from the No Development Zone to allow the construction of the car shed.
The petitioners have been asking the court to direct the government to shift the car shed to Kanjurmarg. Land being claimed for Metro car shed at Aarey by govt and MMRCL Number of trees that will be felled for the project Number of trees that will be transplanted
“Judiciary is the only hope that we have to save our forest and we are glad that the Supreme Court found merit in the case” Stalin Dayanand, project director, NGO Vanashakti
AAREY DEPOT SEEPZ
“The judiciary is the only hope that we have to save our forest and we are glad that the Supreme Court found merit in the case,” said Stalin Dayanand, project director of NGO Vanashakti.
However, the spokesperson for MMRCL said that they have not received a copy of the notice.
“MMRC is yet to receive the
METRO-3
Colaba-BandraSeepz
notice and there is no intimation of the stay. But, once we receive the notice, we will take necessary legal action,” said the MMRCL spokesperson.
In October, the division bench of the HC had upheld the state’s decision to change the use of the land to a metro car shed for the Mumbai Metro 3 line (ColabaBandra-SEEPZ).
Supreme Court bench of justices UU Lalit and Subhash Reddy on Friday heard the Parsi community’s petition seeking the realignment of the Metro-3 tunnel running below two fire temples in south Mumbai.
The bench said the next hearing of the matter would happen on December 10.
The petitioners approached the apex court on Monday, asking for the protection of Wadiaji and Anjuman Atash Behrams at Kalbadevi and Princess Street after the Bombay high court (HC) rejected their plea.
One of the lawyers representing the community said that the case was well represented by the former attorney general (AG) Mukul Rohatgi while the defence lawyer is present AG KK Venugopal. “The hearing went on for almost two hours, after which the AG assured there won’t be drilling under the Atash Behram until the next date of hearing,” he said.
The apex court said the next hearing in this matter would be on December 10.
Last Friday, the Bombay HC rejected a petition by members of the Parsi community seeking the realignment of a tunnel for the Metro-3 (Colaba-Bandra-SEEPZ) line that goes below two revered fire temples in the city.
COLABA MUMBAI:A