The Rs 12,000 crore project involves widening of 900-km of existing highways to provide all-weather connectivity between the Hindu pilgrimage sites of Badrinath, Kedarnath, Yamunotri and Gangotri.
The National Green Tribunal (NGT) on Wednesday issued notice to the Centre and Uttarakhand government on a plea that alleged that forest clearances for Char Dham highway widening project have been obtained without following due procedures.
A four-member joint bench, comprising Justices Jawad Rahim, Raghuvendra S Rathore, SP Wangdi, and expert member SS Garbyal, admitted the plea filed by Citizens for Green Doon, a collective of citizens and activists. The Ministry of Road Transport and Highways, Ministry of Environment, Forest and Climate Change and Uttarakhand state government have been served notice.
While the bench posted the hearing for March 12, advocate Sanjay Parikh, appearing for the petitioners, urged the Tribunal to stop the work till the hearing, and pointed out that trees were being felled indiscriminately. The Tribunal thus orally asked the respondents to temporarily halt work till March 12.
The Char Dham highway widening is one of the pet projects of the Prime Minister's Office (PMO). The Rs 12,000 crore project involves widening of 900-km of existing highways to provide all-weather connectivity between the Hindu pilgrimage sites of Badrinath, Kedarnath, Yamunotri and Gangotri.
The plea accused Centre and Uttarakhand government of cutting 25,303 trees over a stretch of 356.36 km without following due procedure to obtain forest clearances and in the absence of a single, consolidated environmental impact assessment for the project. The petitioners prayed that the clearances were obtained by breaking the project in several smaller segments. This, the plea claimed, allowed the project proponent to not declare the total number of trees to be cut for the entire project.
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