Delhi HC to hear plea against Central Vista project on Tuesday

The Delhi High Court on Monday agreed to consider a plea for halting the construction of the Central Vista Project due to the Covid-19 pandemic. The court will hear the plea on Tuesday.

A bench of Chief Justice D N Patel and Jasmeet Singh allowed a plea made by senior advocate Sidharth Luthra for giving an early date of hearing in the matter.

The Delhi High Court had earlier on May 4 fixed the matter for consideration on May 17 in order to go through the Supreme Court's judgement giving the green signal to the Rs 20,000 crore project.

Additional Solicitor General Chetan Sharma asked the court to fix the matter for Wednesday to allow the Centre to file a reply to the petition.

On Friday, the top court had granted the petitioners liberty to mention the matter for early hearing before the High Court, which was already seized of the issue.

Petitioners Anya Malhotra and Sohail Hashmi claimed that the country is facing a humanitarian health crisis, and if this project is deferred by four to six weeks, nothing will happen. They also said that the IPL has already been suspended.

"Construction is going on in eight sites. We are not concerned about all of them, but the Rajpath, Central Vista stretch and the gardens," they said.

The petitioners asked the court to halt the construction due to the Covid-19 situation in Delhi and the threat posed by the construction work as a potential super spreader.

The apex court on January 5 gave the Union government a go-ahead for constructing new Parliament and other buildings for ministries here with a proposed cost of Rs 20,000 crore. Prime Minister Narendra Modi laid the foundation stone for the project on December 10.