The Supreme Court on Monday sought a report from the Cachar District Legal Services Authority on the alleged uprooting of hundreds of trees and tea bushes and the eviction of dwellers from the Doloo tea garden area of Silchar in Assam for the construction of an airport.
A bench of Chief Justice D.Y. Chandrachud and Justice J.B. Pardiwala passed the direction while dealing with a PIL filed by Tapas Guha, a resident of Calcutta’s Jadavpur. Guha alleged large-scale uprooting of trees and tea farms and the eviction of local estate dwellers by the authorities for the construction of the airport in an alleged breach of environment impact assessment guidelines.
The court passed the direction for a comprehensive report from the district legal services authority even as solicitor-general Tushar Mehta vehemently opposed the PIL and the purported motive behind it.
Mehta questioned the locus standi of the petitioner and argued that the PIL had been filed by a person based in Calcutta who has challenged the construction of an airport in Assam. Civil liberties advocate Prashant Bhushan represented the PIL petitioner.
The solicitor-general submitted that the airport was being constructed by the Airports Authority of India (AAI) as no private players were willing to undertake the project. He alleged that the petitioner had ulterior motives.
“The public interest litigation had been filed for purposes other than ‘public interest’,” Mehta submitted, pleading that an amicus curiae should be appointed by the court to replace the PIL petitioner, who he said had vested interest and was “not a public-spirited person”.
Bhushan, however, questioned Mehta’s submission that there were no felling of trees or clearing of tea estates or eviction of dwellers.
Bhushan read out from the purported portions of the statement made on the floor of the Assam Assembly by the state minister concerned reeling out the various measures undertaken for the construction of the new airport by felling trees, uprooting tea estates and displacing a large number of estate workers and others from the site.
In view of the conflicting arguments, the apex court directed the Cachar District Legal Services Authority to submit a report to the court within a week on the present status of the proposed airport at Silchar.