The Supreme Court has upheld a Bombay High Court order overturning the City and Industrial Development Corporation’s (CIDCO) plans to relocate a sports complex from Ghansoli, Navi Mumbai, to Mangaon in Raigarh district.
In July the HC had quashed a 2021 government decision to relinquish 20 acres of land in Navi Mumbai for a ‘government sports complex’ and shift it to a remote place at Mangaon, 115 kilometres from the existing site. The land was earmarked for the sports complex in 2003.
CIDCO had appealed the order before the SC. On September 27, a bench of Chief Justice of India DY Chandrachud and Justice Manoj Misra, while upholding the HC order, termed the intention to relocate the sports complex to a remote location as “mala fide”.
"The malafides of the State Govt are clear that you shift a sports complex from Navi Mumbai to 115 Km! who will go there?" the CJI remarked.
The CJI took objection to how green spaces such as Sector 12 and 13 in Navi Mumbai earmarked for building sports complexes were being reallotted for commercial development.
“We are so starved of green spaces, now this is probably the last of the green spaces – Sector 13 and Sector 12. Now Sector 12 will completely go to commercial malls, etc.
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“You know what has been done by the public bodies in Maharashtra? Whatever green spaces remain – entirety of it is picked and given to builders. These then become urban sprawls where people have no place to play, no place to go,” he said.
The sports complex was to be constructed by the state government in Sector 12 of Ghansoli. The project ran into trouble after Plots 12 and 12 A reserved for the complex were tendered by CIDCO to a builder to construct residential buildings.
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This led to the Indian institute of Architects filing a PIL in 2019.
“The SC judgment is laudable as environmental activists have been shouting from rooftops that CIDCO has been selling all plots to builders, not sparing even an inch of open space,” NatConnect director B N Kumar said. “Our hopes in the judiciary as a guardian of the people’s constitutional right to a good environment have been vindicated with this laudable judgment,” he said.