Concerns remain over fragile ecosystem

SC has allowed Char Dham road-widening

The Supreme Court’s recent order allowing the government to widen three hill stretches in Uttarakhand that are part of the Char Dham Highway project — Rishikesh to Mana, Rishikesh to Gangotri, and Tanakpur to Pithoragarh — has disappointed environmentalists. A three-member bench of the court modified a September 2020 order that had limited the width of the carriageway to 5.5 metres as per guidelines prescribed in 2018. The court said that it “cannot second guess the infrastructural needs of the armed forces,’’ making it clear that its order was based on its assumption that the government’s contentions about the width of the road are in good faith. The court thus accepted the argument that the armed forces needed wider roads to transport arms and equipment to the border with China from where there is a threat to national security.

The verdict was in response to an application filed by the Ministry of Defence (MoD) for modification of the September 2020 order. An NGO, Citizens for Green Doon, had argued that disaster-resistant roads of smaller dimensions would serve the armed forces better. It should be noted that the Rs 12,000-crore highway expansion project was envisaged in 2016 to provide all-weather roads in the Char Dham circuit, covering Uttarakhand’s four major shrines — Badrinath, Kedarnath, Gangotri and Yamunotri — to promote pilgrimage and tourism. The defence angle entered later when the plan was challenged, but then that was made out to be main reason for the project. The head of the high-powered committee (HPC) appointed by the Supreme Court to examine the issues involved in the project reported that there was “no convincing argument to ignore and override the profound and irreversible ecological damage to the Himalayas that will impact each and every one of us and generations to come”.

It is known that the Himalayan region is environmentally very fragile and has witnessed many natural calamities. While it was contended that a wider road would facilitate quicker troop deployment and transport of supplies, it was pointed out that widening the roads would make the slopes more unstable and endanger the roads. The HPC had pointed out that “a disaster-resilient road is much more critical” than a wider road “prone to frequent blockages, landslides and recurring slope failures”. Widening the road would require more slope-cutting, blasting, tunnelling, dumping and deforestation. While allowing the widening of the road, the court said that “it takes note of the environmental concerns and the unanimous recommendation of the HPC for taking remedial measures’’. It appointed an oversight committee to implement the remedial measures but it is anybody's guess how effective such a mechanism will be.