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Avoid Delhi’s mistakes, curb air pollution urgently in Chennai, says HC
The Madras High Court warns Chennai to avoid Delhi's air pollution crisis, emphasizing the need for ecological projects to enhance public health and safety.
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Amid the Supreme Court’s repeated observations on Delhi’s air pollution crisis and the imminent need for measures to tackle it, the Madras high court has now said that the situation in the national capital has become a “public-health crisis.”
The high court also warned that other cities, including Chennai must prepare themselves to avoid a similar fate.
“The experience of the citizens of Delhi in the recent past is a stark reminder, where escalating AQI levels have led to lock downs, closure of schools, disruption of public life, and severe health impacts, particularly for vulnerable groups such as children and the elderly,” a bench of Justices S M Subramaniam and Mohammed Shafiq said.
The judges made the remarks while vacating an interim order that had restrained the Tamil Nadu government from developing an ecological park on a 160 acre land plot in Chennai that the State had earlier leased to the Madras Race Club.
The bench said projects such as the one concerned were essential to protect Chennai from worsening pollution and climate-driven flooding.
It said that Chennai faces recurring extreme weather events, shrinking wetlands, severe flooding, and increasing pollution,” and thus, cannot afford delays in ecological restoration. The bench also noted that the ecological park project was meant to serve broader public goals by “storing excess rainwater, reducing flood risks, improving air quality, and supporting biodiversity.”
The court cited previous judgements of the Supreme Court to say that states have the constitutional duty to protect citizens from climate-related harms and to maintain ecological balance. It also invoked Article 39(b) of the Constitution and said that material resources like urban land must serve the common good and not private interests.
Chennai, the Court said, must “avoid the mistakes that pushed Delhi into a pollution emergency,” and stressed the urgent need for “lung spaces” and ecological buffers. The Court added that the proposed Eco Park was an environmental infrastructure, essential to keep cities from being “pushed into the same cycle of environmental crisis.”
The high court also noted that the Race Club’s lease had already been terminated and the land belongs to the government. The dispute centres around 160.86 acres of land in the heart of Chennai that the Tamil Nadu government had leased to the Madras Race Club in 1946 and later resumed after terminating the lease over alleged violations. The Race Club had challenged the termination before the High Court and in July this year, a single judge had granted an interim “status quo” order preventing the State from carrying out any work on the land.
