Environmentalists, former Minister appeal Supreme Court to restrain Himalayan road building

Veteran BJP leader and former Union Minister for Human Resource Development Murli Manohar Joshi and Congress party veteran and Rajya Sabha MP Karan Singh, along with several environmentalists and scientists have appealed to the Supreme Court to review its 2021 judgment permitting widening of Himalayan roads, part of the Chardham project, beyond 5.5 metres. 

The Chardham project involves widening several Himalayan roads and has been controversial for more than a decade. Overseen by the Ministry of Road Transport and Highways (MoRTH), the project involves widening mountain roads, including those in the Bhagirathi Eco Sensitive Zone (BESZ), and those leading up to India’s border with China.

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However, environmentalists have argued that cutting hill slopes and the resulting debris are damaging to the eco-system and worsen the impact of landslides and torrential rains as well as cause massive roadblocks and pile-up on these mountain roads. An expert committee set up by the Supreme Court had recommended that the roads be no more than 5.5 metre wide – an intermediate figure from the original MoRTH recommendation of 10 metres. 

While the Supreme Court initially directed the Ministry to abide by the expert committee recommendation, there were subsequent petitions by the government and then the Doklam stand-off with China and assertions by the Ministry of Defence (MoD) that transporting military equipment towards the border with China required wider roads.

Hence, a Bench headed by former Chief Justice D.Y. Chandrachud upheld the government’s mandate to broaden three Himalayan highways, considered crucial by the MoD for quick troop build-up along the Indo-China border, and upheld the government mandate to implement a 10-metre width for three national highways — Rishikesh to Mana, Rishikesh to Gangotri and Tanakpur to Pithoragarh — that act as feeder roads to the northern border with China.

 However, the petition notes that since the Supreme Court order, the result has been “massive landslides, sinking zones and other fragile zones created on highways” all along due to enormous destruction of trees, forest cover and hill slopes. “All the strategic routes, e.g. Badrinath, Gangotri, Pithauragarh, were frequently blocked and are often unusable in the monsoon season.” The petition that has around 50 co-signatories enumerates the various disaster such as avalanches and glacier-led outflow, including the recent torrential rain and damage in Dharali, Uttarakhand, to underline that road construction was having a detrimental impact.

 The petition appealed to the Supreme Court to “review and recall” the 2021 judgment and revert to the expert committee recommendation of 5.5-metre roads in the Himalayan region.