Mumbai: The Brihanmumbai Municipal Corporation (BMC) has filed a special leave petition before the Bombay High Court (HC), seeking to overturn the court’s May 6 order on Powai Lake, which ruled that the BMC’s proposed cycle track around the water body is illegal.
This was done based on two separate public interest litigations (PIL), by IIT-Bombay student Omkar Supekar and city-based NGO Vanashakti, which held that the project violates environmental laws for the protection of wetlands and that it would adversely impact the habitat of Indian marsh crocodiles that live in Powai Lake.
“In view of law as it stands, the work of cycling track is illegal and respondent BMC is restrained from carrying out any reclamation or construction work,” the HC held at the time. However, BMC now contends that the HC’s order is based “on erroneous grounds and without proper appreciation of the facts”. The BMC’s petition maintains that the project is a place-making exercise, which will lead to the creation of valuable public space in the city’s eastern suburbs.
It notes that the HC has failed to take note that “Mumbai and its suburbs with its density of population have a dearth of community recreation spaces. The city with home to 10 million plus residents, and practically no major tourist destination in this part of the city, Powai Lake, with its 10.2 km of waterfront, offered an opportunity to create nearly 60,000 sqm of public walkway/ cycle track for recreational purposes. The periphery of the lake is roughly three times the length of Marine Drive and five times that of Worli Sea Face.”
The BMC has also maintained that the project is not detrimental to the environment, since it involves the use of gabion technology, which is reversible and does not involve the use of concrete.
A senior expert involved with the project, seeking the anonymity of name, highlighted that Mumbai currently has only 0.9 square metres (sq m) of developed open space per person, far lower than the 10-12 sq m recommended in the Centre’s Urban and Regional Development Plans Formulation and Implementation Guidelines.
“The existing land use study for Mumbai, undertaken pursuant to the 2034 development plan, shows that we can increase this to about 1.1 sq m per person if certain open spaces are developed to allow public access. Powai Lake is one such space,” the expert said. For comparison, the United Kingdom has about 20 sq m of developed open space per person, while the United States of America has 24 sq m. “In a city where we are so strapped for room, the Powai Lake project will serve a greater public good,” the expert added.
Environmentalists, however, remain staunch in their scepticism of the project, which can be traced back to a 2016 proposal by BMC, titled ‘Green Wheels Along Blue Lines’. This proposal involved building a 39-km long, fenced jogging and cycling track to replace informal housing settlements along the Tansa pipeline, which were demolished in 2016 as per an HC order. The Powai Lake cycle track will be connected with an older track that exists parallel to the Tansa pipeline, as per drawings seen by HT.
Others pointed out that despite BMC’s “noble” intentions, important details regarding the project have been shrouded in mystery. Official plans and budgets were not placed in the public domain, and the BMC did not solicit any public feedback or hearings, as it would have to for projects covered under the Centre’s environment impact assessment (EIA) notification.
Stalin D, director, Vanashakti, one of the petitioners in the matter, said, “The BMC’s petition is merely repeating the same defence of the project which was put forth last year, and which the court did not see merit in. The basic problem is that they are seeing the lake as a tourist destination and not as an ecologically sensitive wetland, which it is. The lake has been included in the National Wetland Atlas by the ISRO in 2011, and the forest department has also said that it should be protected as a wetland. No wildlife clearance was sought for the project despite the presence of protected crocodiles.”