Shimla Development Plan: Supreme Court for balance between development and environment

Tribune News Service

New Delhi, July 29

Emphasising the need for maintaining a balance between development and environment, the Supreme Court has said it would examine the Shimla Development Plan on August 11.

The Himachal Pradesh Government notified the draft Shimla Development Plan last month to regulate construction activities in the state Capital, including the number of floors, habitable attic and garage in a building.

Named “Vision 2041”, the Shimla Development Plan allows construction in 17 green belts with certain restrictions, including in the core area where construction activity was banned by the National Green Tribunal (NGT). Two floors with a habitable attic and parking in core areas and three stories with parking and a habitable attic in non-core areas would also be permissible.

An area of 22,450 hectare was taken into account for revision and formulation of the development plan that includes the Municipal Corporation, Shimla, the Special Area Development Authorities of Kufri, Shoghi and Ghanahatti Special Area and Additional Shimla Planning Area and additional villages.

Earlier, the NGT had stayed the Shimla Development Plan approved by the previous government in February 2022, terming it illegal and in conflict with earlier orders passed in 2017 to regulate haphazard construction.

The matter came up for hearing on Friday before a Bench led by Justice BR Gavai which deferred it to August 11 after senior counsel Sanjay Parikh, representing the respondents, sought time to respond to the state government’s plea.

The top court was hearing a petition arising out of a November 2017 order of the National Green Tribunal (NGT), which had prohibited construction of any kind, i.e., residential, institutional henceforth in any part of the Core and Green/Forest area as defined under various Notifications issued under the Interim Development Plan as well as by the State Government. The NGT had said that such unplanned and indiscriminate development in the core, non-core, green and rural areas within the Shimla planning area had given rise to serious environmental and ecological concerns.

The top court had on May 3 asked the state government to decide on the 97 objections received to the draft development plan and after considering the same, issue a final development plan in six weeks after it was informed that due to the NGT order, the final development plan could not be published. However, it had said that the final development plan would not be implemented for a month after publication.

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