Uttarakhand Disaster Not linked To Char Dham Highway Project, Centre tells SC

The Centre on Wednesday told the Supreme Court that there was no link between the Char Dham road-widening project in Uttarakhand and the glacier disaster, in which over 50 people were killed earlier this month.

Attorney General KK Venugopal made the submission before a bench led by Justice Rohinton Nariman. This happened four days after Ravi Chopra, the head of the Supreme Court-appointed committee monitoring the highway project in the ecologically-sensitive area, drew a connection between the two.

"We received a letter from the Chairman of the High-Powered Panel saying there is a link between the road widening and the Uttarakhand disaster," Venugopal told the bench, according to NDTV. "But according to us, Defence Ministry, there is no such connection. We want to reply to the allegations and need time." The Supreme Court, then, gave the Centre two weeks to file its response in the matter.

The 889-km road widening project is meant to connect four major pilgrimage sites – Kedarnath, Badrinath, Gangotri and Yamunotri – in Uttarakhand. The projects are also strategically significant as the government says the widening of roads will facilitate the movement of troops to the India-China border.

The highway widening project en route four pilgrimage sites in Uttarakhand has been under the SC scanner for its possible environmental impact on fragile Uttarakhand ecology.

In September 2020, the Supreme Court had directed the government to limit the road width to 5.5 metres as against the previously allowed 10-metre width for a two-lane road.

The Supreme Court had, in January, continued the interim order which directed to keep the road width at 5.5 Meter against the plan of the Ministry of Defence to have a road width of 10 Meters.

However, the government has since requested the court to reconsider its order and modify the permitted width of the road to at least 7.5 metres to allow the movement of army vehicles of the road as it goes along the India-China border.