Sanjay Gandhi National Park's ecological benefits greater than BMC budget: Bombay HC

The court was hearing a petition alleging violation of earlier orders of the court pertaining to rehabilitation of slum dwellers in the park

MUMBAI: The Bombay high court on Friday said that if the ecological benefits accruing from Sanjay Gandhi National Park (SGNP) were to be monetised, they would surpass the budget of the Brihanmumbai Municipal Corporation (BMC), the richest civic body in the country.

The Sanjay Gandhi National Park, Mumbai. (HT Photo)

“No one sitting in this court can let this go,” the division bench of chief justice Devendra Kumar Upadhyaya and justice Amit Borkar said while hearing the Conservation Action Trust’s petition alleging violation of earlier orders of the court pertaining to the phased rehabilitation of slum dwellers residing within national park limits. The petition also alleged that a slew of ongoing projects posed a threat to the park’s existence.

SGNP, the only national park located within municipal limits of an urban metropolis in India, houses approximately 86,000 tenements, mostly from tribal communities, who live in scattered hamlets.

In 1995, Conservation Action Trust, a nonprofit focussed on the environment, had filed a petition in high court seeking removal of encroachers and illegal structures from SGNP. The court had passed an interim order in 1997 and the final order in 2003, directing the removal of encroachments and rehabilitation of eligible encroachers at a site identified by the forest department at Shirdon near Kalyan.

With January 1, 1995 as the cut-off date, families residing in around 33,000 hutments in the national park were found eligible for rehabilitation, the state government had told the court via an affidavit while the case was ongoing.

Only 1-2% of these residents have been rehabilitated as per the court’s orders, the trust stated in its latest petition filed in 2023. Forest officials have failed to rehabilitate eligible encroachers, construct a boundary wall around the park, and remove all encroachments, it noted.

On Friday, senior advocate Janak Dwarkadas, counsel for the petitioner, claimed that many slum dwellers who were shifted out of the national park following the court’s earlier orders had now returned to the premises.

“While they want to have a second bite at the cherry, real estate agents are selling plots of land in the national park,” the senior advocate alleged.

Dwarkadas further alleged that the committee to oversee rehabilitation, constituted following earlier court orders, was acting on its own whims and even changing the cut-off date.

The next hearing in the case is scheduled for Monday.