PIL against Navy training on Netrani Island dismissed

The High Court on Monday dismissed a PIL which urged it to restrain the Indian Navy from doing ‘target practice’ by bombarding Netrani Island located nine nautical miles from Bhatkal in Uttara Kannada.

Filed in 2011 by A N Karthik and others, the PIL contended Netrani Island, also known as ‘Pigeon Island’, is a proposed biodiversity heritage site with rich diversity of coral reefs, flora and fauna, and any kind of ‘target practice’ would completely destroy its biodiversity. The island is also home to rare birds like white-bellied sea eagle and edible nest swiftlets, and several species protected the Wildlife Protection Act, 1972. The heart-shaped island is covered with hard coral (14.7 pc), sponges (2.7 pc), algae (63.2 pc), boring polychaetes (13.3 pc) and mussel (0.3 pc). This is the first report of existence of small giant clams on the West Coast.

The Navy said its men train on the island for just a few hours in a month in order to remain battle-ready and that the ‘target practice’ was being carried out purely for “national security”. In 2012, the High Court had stayed any kind of ‘target practice’.

At the latest hearing, the petitioners’ counsel B R Deepak said the island would act as a ‘primary security’ during a tsunami, prompting a division bench of acting Chief Justice S K Mukherjee and Justice B V Nagarathna to remark, “As Bengaluru will not be affected by tsunami, why should they be worried,”  and dismissed the PIL stating the “target practice” was being held only for “national security”.