Tata housing project: SC sets aside green nods for Tata Housing Project in Chandigarh

NEW DELHI: The Supreme Court on Tuesday set aside all environmental clearances given to a Tata Housing Development project near Chandigarh’s Sukhna lake, saying it smacked of “arbitrariness” on part of government functionaries as some MLAs were also supposed to get flats there.

The court cited ecological disasters due to rapid urbanisation and the impact of that, such as in causing the floods of Uttarakhand in 2013 and Kerala in 2018, to set aside the clearances for the Camelot apartment project in Punjab’s Mohali district that borders Chandigarh.

The city council cleared the project on July 5, 2013. This was later vetted by the state-level Environment Impact Assessment Authority. The Union Territory of Chandigarh, though, had opposed the project.

The approvals were challenged in the Delhi High Court, which in April 2017 quashed those. It observed that the area in question fell within the catchment area of the lake and was only 123 meters away from the boundary of the Sukhna Wildlife Sanctuary. Tata Housing appealed the judgement in the top court.