The central government has urged the Supreme Court to clear the Delhi-Pauri national highway expansion project, which has come under scrutiny after a plea alleged procedural lapses and threat to wildlife as the project threatens to fragment a vital wildlife corridor linking the Rajaji and Corbett tiger reserves.
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In a response filed last week, the ministry of environment, forests and climate change (MoEFCC) said that development projects within national parks, sanctuaries, tiger reserves, tiger corridors, that require environmental clearance within eco-sensitive zones (ESZ) around these protected areas must obtain approval from the Standing Committee of the National Board for Wild Life (SC-NBWL). In the present case, the expansion of NH-119 (Najibabad-Kotdwar-Pauri), involving the four-laning of the existing road, received approval from the SC-NBWL on March 12, 2025. Following this, orders were issued to the National Highway Authority of India (NHAI) to commence work.
The response was filed in a pending application in the TN Godavarman case concerning the protection of forests and wildlife. The applicant—a non-profit organisation, the Centre for Sustainable Green Economy—alleged that the National Highways Authority of India (NHAI) did not seek any expert opinion from the Wildlife Institute of India (WII) prior to undertaking the road expansion project. It further claimed that construction work had commenced on the Uttar Pradesh side of the project without implementing any wildlife mitigation measures, despite the road cutting through an elephant corridor that has seen significant tiger movement in recent times.
The MoFCC said, “In view of the recommendations made by the SC-NBWL, the Chief Wildlife Warden granted the permission under section 29 and 35(6) of the Wild Life (Protection) Act, 1972 for the project over an area 1.1 hectare subject to certain conditions.”
Denying any procedural flaws in sanctioning of the project, the reply further stated, “Mitigation measures are prepared by the concerned state government based upon the ‘Eco-friendly Measures to Mitigate Impacts of Linear Infrastructure on Wildlife’ guidelines issued by the MoFCC on 16th December 2016.”
A bench of Chief Justice of India (CJI) Bhushan R Gavai and justice K Vinod Chandran had on September 17 sought the response of the Centre on the application pursuant to which the response was filed on October 14.
The applicant organisation pointed out that nearly 8 kilometre-long stretch cuts through the wildlife corridor and this corridor connecting Rajaji and Corbett tiger reserves are documented as part of “Elephant Corridors of India, 2023”. The plea alleged that for beginning work on this corridor, the WII was not consulted at the planning stage, and thus the proposed NH-119 widening posed a severe threat to the “ecological connectivity and functional integrity of this critical wildlife corridor.”
In June 2024, the petitioner body had sought information from WII under the Right to Information Act (RTI) on whether any prior consultation was carried out before the project was finalised. The response received from WII on July 5, 2024 confirmed that NHAI did not consult the expert body prior to undertaking the road widening through the forest patch. According to WII, the consultation is vital as the stretch cuts through important tiger and elephant habitats within the Rajaji–Corbett landscape.
The WII’s 2004 report titled “Conservation Status of Tiger and Associated Species in the Terai Arc Landscape, India” identifies this area as forming part of the Rajaji–Corbett corridor. The report records that while this corridor once comprised a continuous stretch of forests between Rajaji National Park and the Khoh river near Corbett Tiger Reserve, much of the lowland forest has been lost to human settlements and agriculture. , confining habitat connectivity to a narrow hilly tract. The report highlighted the need to make the area suitable for tigers and large mammals by controlling the “anthropogenic” pressures from Kotdwar town and adjoining villages.
The Centre’s response confirmed that the project, after being cleared by the Chief Wildlife Warden and State WIldlife Board was forwarded to MoEFCC and was placed for consideration of SC-NBWL in its meeting of October 9, 2024. Noting that the project falls in the buffer zone of Rajaji Tiger Reserve and within a designated tiger–elephant corridor spanning both Uttarakhand and Uttar Pradesh, a committee comprising representatives from the MoEFCC, National Tiger Conservation Authority (NTCA), WII, Uttarakhand Forest Department, Uttar Pradesh Forest Department, and NHAI was recommended for site inspection.
The plea before the top court claimed that on October 21, 2024 when the committee was constituted, the Uttar Pradesh Forest Department was excluded from the team. “This omission is not a mere oversight but a material departure from the Standing Committee’s own recorded recommendation, with the effect of avoiding inter-state, corridor-wide ecological scrutiny and confining the appraisal artificially to the Uttarakhand stretch,” the plea drawn by advocate Gaurav Kumar Bansal said.
It added that unless the court intervenes, the widening of NH119 through the Rajaji–Corbett wildlife corridor will cause irreversible ecological damage, including habitat fragmentation, disruption of seasonal migration routes, and increased wildlife mortality, thereby permanently impairing the ecological integrity of this critical interstate corridor.
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