The world believes that it’s the rightly elected Government’s duty to ease public access to difficult roads and routes but all this has become chaotic with the advent of climate change.
Development has now become a tricky and controversial affair.
One needs to pave and widen 889kms of hill roads, create highways, smoothen a few grounds etc. but what if the region is fragile and ever-evolving, the tectonic planes of the area are constantly moving to frame new worlds.
Char-Dham Project: Connectivity for Faith and Defense
It is a two-lane highway project undertaken by Border Road Organization that aims to connect the four important Hindu pilgrimage centers in Uttarakhand: Badrinath, Kedarnath, Gangotri and Yamunotri.
The project called ‘Char Dham Mahamarg Vikas Pariyojana’ traces back its inception to 2016 by PM Modi, as a ₹12,000 crore project consisting of all-weather roads, railway links, long bridges and even tunnels to facilitate the reach.
While merely improving the connectivity, the project can render several benefits: will help boost tourism in the ‘land of Gods’, bring down the accident rates and provide a stable strategic location for our security forces can respond faster enough to the Chinese troubles.
But undertaking excessive reformation on the hills which are also witnessing constant movement beneath its surface and seem unstable to hold, have raised considerable concerns.
Environmentalists have pointed out how uncontrolled cutting of trees and blowing up land to make roads on the hills can irreversibly damage the fragile and serene ecosystem.
Along with this risk, it can trigger and be a cursor to several landslides in the region.
Though the government has instructed the contractors to furnish the slopes before constructing further, but most of it has been left without check or an impact analysis. This negligence in turn increases the chance of possible landslides.
Another concern has come to the fore i.e., dumping of debris on the hill slopes itself.
It has been studied enough number of times to conclude that such reckless dumping on both sides of river banks can lessen the wide extent of river flow and can consequently cause flooding ahead in river pathway.
Supreme Court of India and the story beyond:
To solve this conundrum, the apex court SCI appointed a review committee. The findings of the same have suggested that several norms were violated during the project conception and construction.
A recent three-judges bench headed by respectable Justice D Y Chandrachud, is destined to ascertain truth in this regard.
While the petitioner NGO claims that Army has never claimed of such requirement, the Attorney General K. K. Venugopal has claimed otherwise.
Explaining the Army’s requirement of 10 meters road, he said: “There is a need for armed forces vehicles, rocket launchers etc. to travel on these roads and all this was not taken into account. Army was ignored in this matter and they need to be presented here before the court”.
“Defense ministry’s stand and our stand is almost the same and that is why we call them a reluctant participant in this issue”.
The Advocate representing petitioner NGO against the indiscriminate felling of trees has claimed that it is only a populist measure around Char Dham Yatra and that earlier devotees used to walk on foot but now, highways and helipads are required.
Loads of studies have previously shown how the black soot emissions from heavy vehicles travelling up and down the roads paired with helicopters, are causing nearby glaciers to break bringing a “catastrophe after catastrophe!”.
While keeping the recent disastrous events in mind, the bench said: “We cannot deny the fact that at such a height, the security of the nation is at stake. Can the highest constitutional court say that we will override defense needs particularly in the face of recent events?”
“Can we say that environment will triumph over the defense of the nation? Or we say that defense concerns be taken care of so that environmental degradation does not take place?”
The bench also asked the Court to appoint a High-Powered Committee that can check the applications filed by the Ministry of Defense against reducing the width of hill roads in the Supreme Court.
Meanwhile it allowed the Ministry of Roads to amend its 2018 issued circular, which it did, increasing the maximum width from 5.5 meters to 10 meters now.
As per the updated circular: “For roads in hilly and mountainous terrain which act as feeder roads to the Indo-China border or are of strategic importance for national security, the carriageway width should be 7 m with 1.5 m paved shoulder on either side”.
The Bench has therefore concluded: “We must tell you our predicament in this… if the Centre says they are doing it for tourism, then we understand and we can impose more stringent conditions.”
“But when it is needed to defend the borders, then it is a serious predicament the court has to encounter in cases like this”.