A special bench of Justices Abhay S Oka and Ujjal Bhuyan took exception to the felling of the tress and said that two documents placed before the Court showed LG’s involvement in the same.
“What is this? This is such a brazen act. Two documents placed on record clearly say that it was LG,” the Court remarked.
The Court sought clarity in this regard.
“We want to know who exactly committed the breach of our order. If nobody responds, we would be inclined to say LG issued directions,” the Court said in response.
The Court noted that all facts related to the felling were not on record and underlined the necessity of a detailed enquiry.
“We find that all the facts relating to felling of trees have not come on record. We see that the LG approved the felling of trees. We feel that a detailed enquiry has to be taken place after the notices are being served to the (DDA) officers. We are not going to take this lightly. If the authority (DDA) is not going to conform to protection of environment, this court has to come to rescue and affirm it clearly that environment protection cannot be taken lightly,” the Court said.
Amidst the hearing, the Court also questioned Senior Advocate Maninder Singh, appearing for DDA, regarding the involvement of the LG.
“As per this, it is being depicted that it was the Lieutenant Governor (LG) who gave the instructions to you to proceed with the cutting of trees. We need answers as to who exactly issued these directions? More than 1100 trees have been cut, I will not say anything more on this? is the chairman responsible for this? This is an extremely serious issue. That is why we issued contempt,” Justice Oka said.
Source: Barandbench
