BJP veterans MM Joshi, Karan Singh write to CJI Gavai to 'review and recall' 2021 Char Dham project judgment: Report

A letter by 57 signatories including BJP veteran Murli Manohar Joshi, former Union minister Karan Singh, and author Ramchandra Guha has been written to CJI Gavai

In a fresh appeal to Chief Justice of India BR Gavai, BJP veteran Murli Manohar Joshi and former Union minister Karan Singh have urged the Supreme Court to “review and recall” its 2021 judgment that cleared the widening of roads under the Char Dham project to 12 metres, The Indian Express reported.

The two leaders, along with 57 signatories including author Ramachandra Guha, historian Shekhar Pathak, and former RSS ideologue KN Govindacharya, argued that the widening of roads has triggered massive landslides and sinking zones in Uttarakhand’s fragile Himalayan terrain.

“This judgment, if not reviewed, will lead to irreparable and immediate impact. Bhagirathi Eco sensitive zone (BESZ) which is the origin of the National River Ganga is also the site of the recent Dharali disaster,” the letter submitted to the CJI said, as per the report.

The 2021 verdict had upheld the Centre’s plan to expand three highways – Rishikesh to Mana, Rishikesh to Gangotri and Tanakpur to Pithoragarh – as “strategic feeder roads” near the China border.

Delivered on December 14, 2021, the ruling by a bench led by Justice DY Chandrachud permitted the Ministry of Defence to adopt the double-laned paved-shoulder (DL-PS) model for these stretches and constituted an oversight panel under Justice A K Sikri to monitor implementation with environmental safeguards.

However, Joshi and Singh insisted that the Ministry of Road Transport and Highways’ 2020 circular, which allowed this road width, should be annulled.

According to The Indian Express, they recommended returning to an intermediate width of 5.5 metres, as previously suggested. “Building a double-laned paved-shoulder road on the pristine Uttarkashi to Gangotri stretch will wreak avoidable damage in the fragile area, which is already witnessing ‘unprecedented disaster events’ this year,” their letter argued.

They further said the adoption of a 10-metre tarred surface and 12-metre formation width “violated a 2018 circular” of the same ministry which had expressly recommended the narrower standard for mountain roads. While the apex court in 2020 had agreed with the smaller width, the 2021 judgment overturned that position, the report said. According to the appeal, “the 2021 judgment has proven counterproductive and hazardous to the Himalayan terrain.”

According to the report, the petitioners also stressed that strategic routes such as Badrinath, Gangotri and Pithoragarh remain unreliable despite the widening, becoming “frequently blocked and often unusable in monsoon season, while remaining risky and landslide-prone throughout the year.”

The letter added: “Moreover, since the construction of Chardham road widening project, these otherwise stable routes are being hit by such massive and chronic landslides which are blocking all defence and local movements towards the border for several days.”

One of the most contentious aspects is the Uttarkashi–Gangotri stretch falling within the Bhagirathi eco-sensitive zone. The appeal noted that, contrary to the recommendations of the Supreme Court’s high-powered committee, the Uttarakhand Forest Department recently gave ‘in-principle approval’ to a bypass project in this valley.

This bypass, they pointed out, requires “the felling of about 3,000 trees and shall impact 17 hectares of forest area,” while another section proposes removing 6,000 deodar trees. “In a valley that has just witnessed a severe avalanche that buried hundreds of people, sacrificing trees that arrest these avalanches, is tantamount to a crime as it directly threatens the lives of the residents in the valley & the tourists too,” the letter stated.

The wider Char Dham Pariyojana covers nearly 825 km of Himalayan highways, broken into 53 packages. By June this year, the government reported that 629 km of work had been completed. Despite this progress, the appeal underscores how the ecological costs continue to mount.

The letter reminds the court that Uttarakhand has sought nearly Rs 5,700 crore in disaster relief this year to repair damages and fortify vulnerable structures. “Reports already place the current season’s losses at around Rs 5,000 crore — the highest since the devastating Kedarnath floods of 2013 which caused damages estimated at $3.8 billion and wiped out nearly Rs 4,000 crore in reconstruction needs, apart from $1 billion in lost tourism revenue,” it said.

Calling for a “disaster and climate resilient approach towards sustainable infrastructure,” the appeal concludes that the safety of lives, livelihoods and the movement of defence forces cannot come at the cost of destabilising the fragile Himalayas. “It is imperative to consider the ecological sensitivity and limitation of the terrain,” Joshi and Singh said.