Navi Mumbai

The Bombay high court on Wednesday, in an important order, banned “non-forest activities” in mangrove areas along the state’s coast.

A division bench of Justice J N Patel and Justice B R Gavai ruled that its directive would hold irrespective of whether the government had notified a mangrove plot as “protected forests” or not.

“No non-forest activities will be permitted throughout the state,” said the judges, while hearing a public interest litigation filed by the Bombay Environmental Action Group for the conservation of mangroves. The court’s order comes four years after the high court in October 2005, had ordered that hacking of mangroves be stopped and a ban on construction and dumping of garbage in such areas.

Following the court’s orders in 2005, the state had conducted satellite mapping of the coast to identify mangrove areas. According to BEAG, though the court had then directed that all mangrove plots be declared as “protected forests”, the government had done so only with around 5,557 hectares of mangrove areas in Mumbai and Navi Mumbai.

The government was yet to act on notifying a substantial chunk of around 25,000 hectares of mangrove plots in the rest of the state to grant them protected status.

Tata Power and other public as well as private companies have approached the court as some of their development projects in or near mangrove areas have been held up because of the 2005 HC ban. The proposed projects are to come up in 550 hectares of mangrove land and include the transharbour sea-link, new airport, storm-water drain works among others. The court has asked the agencies to approach the “competent authorities” for approval. All such approvals would also have to get the court’s nod, the HC said.

Comments are closed.