Veteran environmentalist Ravi Chopra has resigned as chairman of the Supreme Court’s High Powered Committee (HPC) on the Char Dham venture, saying that his “belief that the HPC could protect this fragile (Himalayan) ecology has been shattered”.
In his resignation letter to the secretary normal of the Supreme Court on January 27, Chopra referred to the apex court docket’s December 2021 order that accepted the broader highway configuration to fulfill protection wants, as a substitute of what the HPC had beneficial and the SC accepted in its earlier order in September 2020.
“The judgment has additionally confined the position of the HPC to overseeing… the 2 Non-Defence roads solely… the instructions and proposals made by the HPC previously have both been ignored or tardily responded to by MoRTH (ministry of Road Transport and Highways) ). This expertise doesn’t encourage confidence that the response of MoRTH shall be a lot totally different even in relation to the 2 Non-Defence roads,” Chopra wrote within the letter.
“The Honorable Court has additionally permitted the permission to hunt authorized reduction for widening of the Non-Defence highways. In the circumstances, I don’t see any objective in persevering with to go the HPC or certainly, even to be part of it,” he wrote.
Speaking to The Indian Express, Chopra stated: “I feel I’ll be able to do more without the constraints of being part of an official committee — perhaps engage more meaningfully in public education, and also monitor closely and write about how the (Char Dham) project carries on — particularly in the Bhagirathi Eco Sensitive zone where the HPC put precise conditions for roads and the SC asked the MoRTH to follow those unanimously recommendations.”
In his letter, 75-year-old Chopra recalled how he was “compelled to accept” the accountability in September 2019, regardless of his age, “by an inner voice born out of a 40-year commitment to help restore the degraded Himalayan environment and the livelihoods of its people”.
“That identical inside voice now compels me to maneuver out. The perception that the HPC may defend this fragile ecology has been shattered. I can do no extra. I due to this fact select to resign,” he wrote.
Asked if he felt despondent, Chopra stated: “While touring via villages till a decade in the past, I might be amazed at how little folks remembered in regards to the Chipko motion. Today, we’ve got children in Dehradun opposing tree felling. These are straws within the wind. One has to maintain sowing, the rain will come.”
Describing the Himalayas as a marvel of nature, Chopra wrote in his resignation letter: “Sustainable improvement calls for approaches which might be each geologically and ecologically sound. Such improvement additionally enhances disaster-resilience and therefore nationwide safety, particularly when local weather challenges to slope stability have gotten way more unpredictable.
“As a member of the HPC, nevertheless, I noticed at shut quarters the desecration of the as soon as impregnable Himalayas… I’ve seen engineers armed with fashionable technological weapons assaulting the Himalayas… The engineers exult and flow into pictures proving their conquest of Nature, little realizing that they too are part of Nature and can’t survive if their very own pure setting is destroyed.
“Nature, however, neither forgets nor forgives such wilful wrongs inflicted on her treasures. Already we have witnessed stretches of roads disappear that have later taken months to repair. Nature sounded warning bells in June 2013 and February 2021 with disastrous consequences.”
A flagship initiative of the Centre, the Rs 12,000-crore freeway enlargement venture was envisaged in 2016 to widen 889 km of hill roads to supply all-weather connectivity within the Char Dham circuit — Badrinath, Kedarnath, Gangotri and Yamunotri — within the higher Himalayas .
In 2018, the venture was challenged by an NGO for its potential influence on the Himalayan ecology because of felling bushes, chopping hills and dumping excavated materials. In 2019, the SC shaped the HPC Chopra to look at the problems, and in September 2020, accepted his advice on highway width and so forth.
In November 2020, the ministry of Defense sought wider roads to fulfill the requirement of the Army. In December 2021, the SC modified its September 2020 order on the bottom that the court docket couldn’t “interrogate the policy choice of the establishment which is entrusted by law with the defense of the nation”.
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With inputs from TheIndianEXPRESS
