MUMBAI: The Supreme Court on Friday stayed the Bombay High Court verdict that had restored the status of the Kanjurmarg dumping ground to a ‘protected forest’. The stay order has paved the way for the Brihanmumbai Municipal Corporation (BMC) to continue to dump solid waste at Mumbai’s only active dump yard, where around 6,000 to 10,000 tonnes of garbage is dumped every day.
The Supreme Court order was delivered on a special leave petition (SLP) filed by the state government, challenging the May 2 verdict of the high court, which had set aside a 2009 decision of the BMC to denotify the protected forest status of the land, so that they could use it as a dumping yard.
On Friday, a division bench comprising Chief Justice B R Gavai and Justice K Vinod Chandran took note of the submissions by solicitor-general Tushar Mehta, appearing for the state, that the landfill had been incorrectly notified as a protected forest. As a result, the state contended, it had de-notified the 118 hectares in question in 2009, so that the land could be used as a dumping ground.
“We will stay the order,” said the apex court. When a lawyer representing the state government opposed the order, the bench asked, “You tell us where the garbage can be dumped now.”
The original PIL, filed in 2013 by non-profit Vanashakti, had challenged the environmental clearances given for the setting up of the landfill on protected forest land. It argued that the 2009 de-notification of the plot violated procedure as noted in the Forest Conservation Act, 1980.
When restoring the protected forest status of the landfill in May, the high court had also given the BMC three months to comply with its order.
The state then filed the SLP in the Supreme Court on July 26, arguing, “The impugned judgment (…) would have a disastrous effect on the city of Mumbai, as there being no other similar waste disposal ground and landfill. If… it is to be discontinued, the entire city of Mumbai would be deprived of a solid waste dumping area and its residents will have to suffer unnecessary and untold hardships and major health risks.”
It further clarified that only 20.76 hectares of the 141.77 hectares that were de-notified had a mangrove forest on them, and that they had not been impacted by or included in the waste-processing site in the decade and a half that the BMC had been using it. The SP argued that the plot’s original notification as a protected forest was erroneous.
Stalin D, director, Vanashakti, said they had been provided with a copy of the SLP on Thursday, only a day before the hearing in the Supreme Court, leaving little time to have their lawyers reach Delhi or prepare for their submissions in court.
“The SC stayed the HC order within two minutes, without hearing us or opening our file. We fought for 15 years against all odds, got a good judgement, only to have it overturned in a few minutes, where we weren’t given a fair chance,” said Stalin.