A portion of the Chandigarh-Manali highway was washed away after heavy rainfall led to flooding in the Beas river in Kullu, Himachal Pradesh, in August.
| Photo Credit: PTI
The Supreme Court on Tuesday (September 23, 2025) passed an interim order directing the State of Himachal Pradesh and its forest department to file detailed responses to queries raised by the court about the increasing instances of landslides and flash floods devastating the sensitive Himalayan ecology.
The one-page record of the suo motu court proceedings in the case was only a paragraph long. The questions from the court are still not available in the public domain.
The paragraph-length record available currently on the top court’s website merely referred to the fact that the court has made the following order directing “the State of Himachal Pradesh to furnish response to the queries, supported by an affidavit of the Principal Secretary, Department of Forest, State of Himachal Pradesh, by the next date of hearing with an advance copy to the amicus curiae”. The case is listed again on October 28.
“We have posed certain questions to the State government and forest department based on the written submissions that have been presented for our perusal,” Justice Vikram Nath, who headed the Bench that heard the suo motu case, remarked in the morning in open court.
The court directed that responses to the questionnaire must be submitted by October 28, 2025. It further stated that the detailed order will be uploaded by the end of the day.
The court had reserved the case for orders on September 15. It had registered the suo motu case on August 25 while expressing anxiety at the scenes of destruction in the State caused by nature’s fury, with one of the judges even remarking that State may “vanish into thin air” if immediate remedial measures were not undertaken.
Published – September 23, 2025 10:37 pm IST
