Green tribunal stays Pune Metro work

Petitioners have demanded realignment of a stretch to prevent damage to riverbank ecosystem

January 03, 2017 09:38 am | Updated 09:38 am IST - Pune:

The newly inaugurated Pune Metro rail project hit an obstacle on Monday, with the western zone bench of the National Green Tribunal (NGT) issuing an interim stay on a portion of the proposed route through the Mula-Mutha riverbed in the city.

A two-judge bench of Justice U.D. Salvi and Dr. Ajay Deshpande passed the directive acting on an Environmental Interest Litigation (EIL) filed in the tribunal on May 26 last year by a group of prominent personalities.

The EIL had contended that a 1.7-km-stretch of the proposed route, passing through the left bank of the Mula-Mutha river, could severely damage the river’s ecosystem.

The petitioners include Member of Parliament Anu Aga, the late senior journalist Dileep Padgaonkar, architect Sarang Yadwadkar and environmentalist Aarti Kirloskar.

The stay on this stretch of Line 2 will affect work on the entire first phase of the project, as the 15-km line linking Vanaz with Ramwadi is expected to be the first to be built.

In the EIL, the petitioners had made the PMC, the Maharashtra government, the Central government, the Delhi Metro Rail Corporation and the Maharashtra Pollution Control Board respondents. The lawyer representing the Pune Municipal Corporation (PMC) proposed that the Maharashtra Metro Rail Corporation, which will implement the Pune Metro project, be made a respondent as well, to which the judges agreed.

“This is nothing but a delaying tactic on the PMC’s part to buy time,” Mr. Yadwadkar said to The Hindu . He said that the PMC needed to come up with an alternative route for this portion, and that the EIL objected specifically to the alignment along the riparian zone.

The project was inaugurated by Prime Minister Narendra Modi on December 24 amid much political acrimony, with the Bharatiya Janata Party, the Congress and the Nationalist Congress Party all scrambling to take credit for it. Many felt the project was quickly greenlighted in view of the upcoming civic polls in the city.

“This is an important ruling, which clearly proves that the inauguration of the project was done in a hasty manner with scant regard for the environment,” said advocate Asim Sarode, who represents the petitioners.

The next hearing has been postponed till January 26.

Ecological impact

In September last year, a report by the PMC’s Biodiversity Monitoring Committee had corroborated the objections raised in the EIL, stressing that the alignment of the route on the Mutha riverbed from Panchaleshwar temple to Nava Pul would “destroy the biodiversity of what remained of the riparian zone (the interface or space between the existing water and the actual riverbank) still untouched by urban incursions.”

It had noted that removal of trees to make way for the project would severely affect the habitats of at least 18 bird species, and impact 63 species of exotic flowering plants.

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