Supreme Court stays Bombay HC verdict declaring Kanjurmarg land in Mumbai as protected forest

New Delhi: The Supreme Court on Friday stayed the Bombay High Court verdict that had restored the status of 120 hectares of land in Kanjurmarg area in Mumbai as a "protected forest", paving the way for the Municipal Corporation of Greater Mumbai to use the area as a garbage landfill.

The Bombay High Court had on May 2 quashed the de-notification of 119.91 hectares of alleged mangrove land in Kanjurmarg, restoring it to its original status as a protected forest. The land was earmarked by the civic body for use as a garbage landfill.

A bench comprising Chief Justice B R Gavai and Justice K Vinod Chandran took note of the submissions of Solicitor General Tushar Mehta, appearing for the state government, that the area was used for garbage landfill and was wrongly notified as a protected forest.

As the area was declared “protected forest” inadvertently, the state authorities denotified the place for using it as a garbage landfill.

“We will stay the order,” the top court said.

When a lawyer opposed the order, the bench asked, “You tell us where the garbage can be dumped now.” The high court had refused to accept the state and the Mumbai civic body's contention that an earlier notification classifying the area as a forest was a "mistake".

"In view of the forest notification having been a product of specific and clear factual review, the impugned notification to exclude 119.91 hectares of land by re-issuing the forest notification by way of a corrigendum, deserves to be quashed and set aside," the high court said.

The notification changing the land's status was "unsustainable and in conflict with the requirement of law governing de-reservation of a forest", the high court said.

The high court verdict had come on a 2013 PIL filed by Vanashakti, a public trust, challenging the de-notification of land located at village Kanjur which was classified as a protected forest.

The Union Ministry of Environment, Forests and Climate Change (MOEFCC) had granted environment clearance to the project in March 2009 for setting up a garbage dump.

The civic body had argued that the new notification merely corrected an error in the forest notification.