Tanvi Sinha
A three-judge bench of the Supreme Court on 5th January 2021, allowed for the continuation of construction of the New Delhi Central Vista area rejecting the petitions that had asked for it to be stopped completely.
The bench of Justice AM Khanwilkar and Justice Dinesh Maheshwari of the majority judgement and Justice Sanjiv Khanna of the dissenting opinion had with a 2:1 majority held that the stay on the work is lifted.
This brings great relief to the DDA who have control over the project and considerable disappointment to the petitioners belonging to the ten or so petitions that brought up by people on accounts of unnecessity, environmental issues, and the issue of if the persons behind the move would have the authority to make it.
The majority judgement justified their stance by saying that the environment norms dictated by the Union Ministry of Environment, Forests and Climate Change was to as it should be and that they believed that the land use was proper as well.
The dissenting opinion from Justice Sanjiv Khanna only really spoke of the fact that DDA should have taken cognizance from the Heritage Conservation Committee before taking this decision.
The reason for the necessity of this project was laid down by the Attorney General of India, representing the Centre, when he stated that the old Power Centre had the parliaments and other buildings too small and suffering from a space crunch, were not prepared for fire hazards and were susceptible to earthquakes.