Dehradun, Feb 11 (PTI) The chairman of the Supreme Court-appointed high-powered committee on Char Dham all-weather road, Ravi Chopra, has resigned expressing disappointment over the apex court order limiting the panel’s jurisdiction to only two ‘non-defence’ stretches of the project.
Tendering his resignation to the secretary-general of the Supreme Court of India, Chopra also said the HPC’s directions and recommendations have either been ignored or tardily responded to by the Ministry of Road Transport and Highways.
In an order on December 14 last year, the Supreme Court had given the task of overseeing around 70 per cent of the 900-km all-weather road project to an ‘oversight committee’, headed by a retired judge and confined the HPC’s role to oversee the implementation of only two ‘non-defence’ stretches of the project.
“I do not see any purpose in continuing,” Chopra said in his resignation letter.
He said he had accepted the offer to head the HPC in 2019 as an inner voice born out of a 40-year commitment to help restore the degraded Himalayan environment and the livelihoods of its people but the same inner voice now compels him to move out.
“The belief that the HPC could protect this fragile ecology has been shattered,” he said.
“By the judgment dated December 14, 2021, the Hon’ble Court, while recognizing the hard work put in by the HPC, has accepted the wider DL-PS configuration, instead of what the order dated September 08, 2020 envisaged.
“The judgment has also confined the role of the HPC to overseeing the implementation of its recommendations for the Project on the two Non-Defence roads only. As elaborated in the HPC final report of July 13, 2020, the directions and recommendations made by the HPC in the past have either been ignored or tardily responded to by MoRTH.
“This experience does not inspire confidence that the response of MoRTH will be much different even in relation to the two non-defence roads. The Hon’ble Court has also permitted the respondents to seek legal relief for the widening of the non-defence highways. In the circumstances, I do not see any purpose in continuing to head the HPC or indeed, even to be a part of it,” he said. PTI ALM RAX RAX
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Source: The Print
