‘Not a binary selection’: SC quashes Bombay HC order to demolish park to revive 100-year-old lake | India News

NEW DELHI: The Supreme Court Friday greenlighted Municipal Corporation of Greater Mumbai’s theme backyard that got here up on the website of the greater than 100-year-old Khajuria lake in Kandivali (West), overturning a 2018 judgment of the Bombay HC directing the Maharashtra authorities and MCGM to demolish the constructions and restore the lake. However, SC requested MCGM to keep and protect the present park as a inexperienced space in perpetuity, completely for public use with none predominant industrial exercise. The park serves as a important leisure nucleus for kids, providing them protected areas for play and bodily exercise; gives senior residents devoted areas for strolling and social interplay; and creates alternatives for group engagement and leisure. A bench of Justices Surya Kant and N Kotiswar Singh additionally directed MCGM to “constitute an expert committee within three months to explore the feasibility of developing an alternative water body in nearby areas to compensate for the ecological functions of the original water body”. Writing the judgment, Justice Kant additional requested MCGM to undertake a complete train inside a 12 months for the ecological restoration of water our bodies which can be dying, and file compliance reviews earlier than HC. It requested HC “to see that the directions issued by the SC are complied with in letter and spirit”.Interestingly, HC’s 2018 judgment was handed by a bench of which Justice A S Oka, who retired just lately as an SC decide, was a half. The case lingered on within the SC, with the decision lastly delivered 5 days after Justice Oka’s retirement. Allowing MCGM’s enchantment, the bench stated although HC’s views had been well-intentioned and, prima facie, a appropriate interpretation of settled notions similar to the general public belief doctrine, they required reconsideration via the “prism of practical realities and evolved ground conditions”. Justice Kant stated, “There cannot be a simplistic binary choice between a park or a pond, as each serves distinct ecological and social functions contingent upon specific circumstances, geographical location, and evolving usage patterns”.The verdant leisure park that got here up over the so-called lake, one which had been lowered to a rubbish dump over time and couldn’t assist natural world, is now a well-maintained city oasis, teeming with mature bushes, because the appeals are being lastly determined greater than 15 years after it got here up on the website, he added. “It provides an essential green space in an increasingly concretised urban environment, with trees and other foliage contributing significantly to oxygen generation, air purification, and microclimate regulation,” the bench stated. Implementing HC’s directives at this stage would engender penalties that contravene the very environmental rules they sought to uphold.