The Bombay High Court on Wednesday issued notices and sought response from the state government’s environment and urban development departments, Brihanmumbai Municipal Corporation (BMC) and Maharashtra Pollution Control Board (MPCB) on PIL seeking a population carrying capacity survey for Mumbai.
The plea urged the court to direct the authorities to conduct the survey so that the conflict between urban development and environmental sustainability can be addressed.
It has also sought direction to authorities to consider findings of such a survey while preparing and sanctioning the next Development Plan (DP) of the city.
A division bench of Chief Justice Alok Aradhe and Justice Makarand S Karnik was on April 9 hearing a PIL by NGO The Conservation Action Trust.
The PIL claimed that the development of the city can be made “sustainable” with the help of “assimilative capacity of natural and built environment” and the carrying capacity-based model examines existing environment and infrastructure to ascertain if it can withstand more stressors.
The PIL argued through senior advocate Shiraz Rustomjee that the development beyond the “carrying capacity” affects the infrastructure, decreases quality of life and also causes environmental degradation.
“Large-scale developments are being approved and executed without due regard to their impact on the city’s environment,” it added.
The NGO stated that across countries, carrying capacity studies are considered to be a way of assessing town planning through various approaches and factors such as environment, ecology, socio-economic and commercial objectives behind development are examined.
“Development beyond the bounds of the assimilative capacity of the environment, leading to the degradation of health, welfare and the standard of living of citizens constitutes a violation of Article 21 of the Constitution,” the PIL argued. The HC issued notices to the respondent authorities seeking their response during the hearing after four we
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