BENGALURU: In a big win for environmentalists, the Supreme Court has upheld the Karnataka High Court’s stay on widening of the National Highway-4A between Karnataka and Goa passing through the fragile Western Ghats. It also dismissed a Special Leave Petition filed by the National Highways Authority of India (NHAI). The agency had challenged the high court’s stay order restraining it from carrying on with the project.
A bench comprising Justices L Nageshwar Rao, Hemant Gupta and Ajay Rastogi, however, granted liberty to the NHAI to approach the Karnataka High Court for any relief.In November, 2019, the high court, in its interim order, had stayed the widening work on NH-4A as it did not have any valid environmental clearance or other approvals.
One lakh trees axed for highway work: Activists
The project had resulted in massive felling of trees by NhAI in Khanapur taluk of Belagavi district. On the 84.3-km stretch, almost one lakh tree had been felled, environmentalists had estimated and filed PIL in the high Court in 2019. In view of the massive and illegal felling of trees, the high court said NhAI had failed to take environmental clearances for the project. Starting from Belagavi, the 153-km-long Nh-4A ends at Panaji in Goa and before touching the neighbouring state, the highway passes through western Ghats.
Of this, 84.3 km falls in Karnataka while 69 km is in Goa. Since the widening of Nh- 4A was taken up by NhAI along the Karnataka stretch, activists have been up in arms against the felling of such a massive tree cover. Besides, the project will fragment and disturb a pristine tiger landscape in Karnataka- Goa as also the corridor that supports movement of wildlife, especially tigers, between Karnataka-Goa-Maharashtra, they argued. Apart from this, the NhAI neither sought environment clearance nor wildlife or forest clearances for the widening project.
Although NhAI claimed that only 22,000 trees were felled for the project, local activists claimed that nearly a lakh trees had been axed. welcoming the decision, the United Conservation Movement said, “this is a great milestone for our case against Nh-4A in Karnataka as their SLP has been dismissed. this is the same road that is proposed to be widened through Mollem National Park and Bhagwan Mahaveer Sanctuary in Goa. In Karnataka, we have already lost thousands of trees in Belagavi and haliyal divisions by the time we got a stay.”
Heblikar, trust had filed plea
The petition was filed in the HC in January 2019 by film director Suresh Heblikar and United Conser-vation Move-ment trustee Joseph Hoover.
