The Madurai Bench of the Madras High Court has cleared the decks for the proposed Madurai Ring Road phase-1 highway project, floated by the Central government under the Bharatmala Pariyojana Scheme.
Dismissing a batch of public interest litigation petitions that challenged land acquisition and notification for the project, a Division Bench of Justices P.N. Prakash and B. Pugalendhi imposed cost on petitioners and observed that the petitions were devoid of merits.
The petitioners had sought a direction to the Centre and State to re-align the proposed highway project. They had contended that prior environmental clearance was not obtained for the project and there would be famine in the future if agricultural lands were acquired. They also said that the project would run through reserved forest areas.
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Pursuing the documents, the judges observed, “We find from the records that out of the 2,844.55 hectares of wetlands available in the area, NHAI is acquiring only a miniscule extent of 81.73 hectares, which is only 2.83 %”.
Further, the court observed that out of the 1,307 persons whose lands were acquired, only six of them had filed petitions, challenging the acquisitions and even those petitions had been dismissed by the court earlier.
Relying on a Supreme Court judgement, the court observed that NHAI was an expert body having expertise in the field of development and maintenance of national highways. “We cannot issue a direction based on their (petitioners) assertion calling upon the NHAI to re-align the road,” the court said.
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The court directed two petitioners to pay ₹50,000 each to the Chief Minister's Public Relief Fund as the State exchequer was cash-strapped to combat the spread of COVID-19 pandemic. The fund can be used for providing treatment to those affected by the pandemic, the court said.