CharDham project- National Security vs Environment

Contact Counsellor

Last Updated12/11/2021

Supreme Court on Thursday reserved its judgment on an appeal by the Ministry of Defense for relaxing its September 2021 order that specified the road width under the Char Dham Mahamarg Vikas Pariyojana of the Ministry of Road Transport and Highways (MoRTH).
It also emphasized the need to balance national security concerns with environmental issues in the context of the Army’s request to expand the Chard ham Project (CDP) roads leading to the Indo-China border.
The request came in the context of construction being carried out by China across the border which has been opposed by an NGO citing environmental concerns.

It aims to “improve the connectivity to the Chardham pilgrimage centres (Badrinath, Kedarnath, Gangotri, Yamunotri) in the Himalayas.
It involves improvement and development of 889 km length of national highways.
This project can act as the strategic feeder roads which connect the India-China border with the Army camps in Dehradun and Meerut .

In 2018, the road-expansion project was challenged by an NGO for its potential impact on the Himalayan ecology due to felling trees, cutting hills and dumping muck (excavated material).
The Supreme Court formed a high-powered committee (HPC) under environmentalist Ravi Chopra to examine the issues that submitted two reports after members disagreed on the ideal width for hill roads.
In September, the Supreme Court upheld the recommendation of four HPC members, including Chopra, to limit the carriageway width to 5.5 m based on a March 2018 guideline issued by MoRTH for mountain highways.
The majority report by 21 HPC members, 14 of them government officials, favoured a width of 12m as envisaged in the project .
A wider road requires additional slope cutting, blasting, tunnelling, dumping and deforestation – all of which will further destabilise the Himalayan terrain, and increase vulnerability to landslides and flash floods.

WORK WITHOUT VALID PERMISSION: Project work and felling of trees up to over 250 km, has been continuing illegally since 2017-18 by a post facto & legally untenable work order issued by the state Forest Department.
MISUSING OLD CLEARANCES: Work started on stretches adding up to over 200 km on the basis of old forest clearances issued to the Border Roads Organisation during 2002-2012.
FALSE DECLARATION: Tree felling, hill cutting and muck dumping on stretches adding up to over 200 km commenced by falsely declaring that these stretches did not fall in the Eco Sensitive Zones of Kedarnath Wildlife Sanctuary, Rajaji National Park, Valley of Flowers National Park etc.
WORK WITHOUT SEEKING CLEARANCE: Work began on various stretches, adding up to at least 60 km, after withdrawing applications for forest clearance without furnishing reasons.
VIOLATION OF SC DIRECTIVE: Work started on stretches adding up to at least 50 km, even though the state government said in an affidavit in April 2019 that stretches where work had not already begun would be subject to the direction of the SC.

The MoD has supported a double-lane road having a carriageway width of 7 m with 8-10 m formation width to “meet the requirement of the Army”.
Project always had a strategic angle to it as the highways would facilitate troop movement to areas closer to the China border.
This became the sole justification for building wider roads.

It may destroy about 690 hectares of forests with 55,000 trees and evacuate an estimated 20 million cubic meters of soil.
Uprooting of vegetation in the widening of roads can prove to be perilous for the biodiversity and regional ecology leading to loss of biodiversity like Kalij Pheasant , Tragopans, endangered fish Golden Mahseer etc.

The project holds immense opportunities for both tourism sector and defense. Hence, both the stakeholders must negotiate amicably and come to a viable and sustainable solution in order to sort this issue out.
Also a proper Environment Impact Assessment has to be carried out of the concerned areas so that chance of any natural or man-made disaster is mitigated.