the goan I network
PANAJI
The Supreme Court has revoked the suspension to the Environmental Clearance it had imposed on the construction of the Mopa airport paving way for the work to begin.
The decision which was delivered on Thursday morning, was based on a revised environmental clearance granted by the expert appraisal committee of the Ministry of Environment Forests and Climate Change.
However, the Supreme Court has appointed the National Environmental Engineering Research Institute to oversee compliance with the directions cumulatively issued by this Court that costs of which will have to be borne by the State government.
The project which was earlier to be completed by September 2020 will now have to adhere to a revised timeline which sources say will be adjusted taking all factors into consideration and could be somewhere between the end of 2021 and early 2022.
The Supreme Court in March last year, had directed the EAC to revisit the recommendations made by it for the grant of an EC and kept the environmental clearance in abeyance.
Petitioner Hanuman Aroskar and the Federation of Rainbow Warriors had alleged that the Environment Impact Assessment was flawed. The concerns related to the need to preserve the biodiversity of the Western Ghats.
The Supreme Court in its earlier order had emphasized the failure of the State of Goa, as the project proponent, to provide complete information on the existence of reserved forests including those which fall within a 15 km radial distance of the proposed airport at Mopa underlying the serious deficiency in the disclosure of information by the project proponent.
After the Supreme Courts censure, the State conceded before the MoEF’s expert appraisal committee that there are seven reserved forests within 15 km of the proposed airport and six proposed reserved forests in the Goa region as well as 29 proposed reserve forests within 15 km of the proposed airport in Maharashtra region.
Further, the Goa government also placed on record the presence of four rivers in Goa viz Terekhol river, Kalna river, Chapora river, Moide river and one river viz Tilari river in Maharashtra as also other environmental features like the patches of mangroves observed near Moide river, Terekhol river, Chapora river and the fact that the Western Ghat Mountain range falls within the study area, all of which was concealed from the earlier EIA.
The EAC then proceeded to make detailed notes of the additional ecological features in the vicinity and propose mitigation measures for the same.
The Supreme Court also
brushed aside the concerns raised by the activists concerning the constitution of the Expert Appraisal Committee as well as conflict of interest.
“Having assessed the process which took place following the judgment of this Court and the outcome, it would be difficult for this Court to hold that it fails to meet the standards which the court applies in the course of judicial review in environmental matters,” the Supreme Court bench of Justice D Y Chandrachud and Hemant Gupta ruled.
“The evaluation of merits is a matter which primarily rests with an expert authority. The court can certainly supervise procedural compliance and ensure that all necessary inputs which are required to be factored into the decision-making process have been duly borne in mind. Once this has been done, the court must be circumspect in micro-managing the decision-making process by the EAC by substituting its own opinion for that of the EAC,” the Supreme Court ruled.
Petitioners Abhijit Prabhudesai of the Federation of Rainbow Warriors however, said the fight will continue.
“We are of course disappointed with the order but we will continue to fight against it in the remaining available avenues. We believe that this project is anti-people and anti-development. The conditions they have imposed do not satisfy us because the EIA itself is flawed and we have been able to prove that the EIA study is flawed and is only to support the government policy which itself is anti-people and against the environment,” Abhijit Prabhudesai said.
