Char Dham highway project | India’s most important climate change case today: Colin Gonsalves

The project is challenged over its potential impact on Himalayan ecology due to felling of trees, cutting hills, and dumping excavated material.

For Colin Gonsalves, designated Senior Advocate of the Supreme Court of India, and the founder of Human Rights Law Network (HRLN), the Char Dham Highway Development Project case, currently being heard by the apex court, is the most important climate change case in India today.

"It is the most important climate change case in the country,” Gonsalves told Moneycontrol.

The Supreme Court on November 11 reserved its judgment on an appeal by the Ministry of Defence (MoD) for relaxing its September 2021 order that specified the road width under the Char Dham project of the Ministry of Road Transport and Highways (MoRTH), saying "there is such defence versus environment argument at all… You have to balance both concerns.”

A flagship initiative of the central government, the Rs 12,000-crore highway expansion project was envisaged in 2016 to widen nearly 900 km of hill roads to provide all-weather connectivity within the Char Dham circuit, covering Uttarakhand’s four major shrines — Badrinath, Kedarnath, Gangotri and Yamunotri, in the upper Himalayas.

Such an expansion has again brought to the fore the big debate on development vs environment. In 2018, the road-expansion project was challenged by an NGO, Citizens for Green Doon, for its potential impact on Himalayan ecology due to felling of trees, cutting hills, and dumping excavated material.

The NGO says that a wider road requires additional slope cutting, blasting, tunnelling, dumping and deforestation – all of which will further disrupt the Himalayan terrain, and increase vulnerability to landslides and flash floods.

Gonsalves is satisfied by the response of the apex court. "The three judges (of the apex court) have given us a very patient hearing, which is all that an advocate can ask for,” he said.

The Supreme Court set up a high-powered committee (HPC) under environmentalist Ravi Chopra to examine the issues.

In July 2020, the HPC submitted two reports after members disagreed on the ideal width for hill roads.

In September, the Court upheld the recommendation of four HPC members, including Chopra, to limit the carriageway width to 5.5 m (along with 1.5 m raised footpath), based on a March 2018 guideline issued by MoRTH for mountain highways.

HPC chairman Chopra caused a stir when he wrote to the Environment Ministry in August 2020, outlining how the project was being implemented in a brazen breach of statutory norms.

The violations include work without valid permission, misuse of old clearances, work without seeking clearances and issuing false declarations.

How did Gonsalves meet the NGOs and come to represent their case? "Well, they are from the Himalayas and know the territory very well and I happen to represent their case,” says the senior advocate, who has built the roughly 200-strong team of HRLN lawyers and paralegals into a formidable public interest law group in the country.