Navi Mumbai: CIDCO Files Review Petition Against NGT Order Restricting Construction on Nerul Plot

The City and Industrial Development Corporation (CIDCO) has filed a review petition challenging the recent decision by the Western Zone of the National Green Tribunal (NGT). The NGT had imposed restrictions on CIDCO, prohibiting the sale, transfer, or granting of any leasehold rights for plot number 2A in sectors 54, 56, and 58 of Nerul (West), Navi Mumbai.

This restriction applies specifically to the construction of residential and commercial buildings/structures, with the exception of the area falling outside the Coastal Regulation Zone (CRZ). In June-July 2023, CIDCO conducted an auction for a 25,138.86 sqm plot situated in sectors 54, 56, and 58 in Nerul through a tender process.

Notably, a portion of the plot fell within the Coastal Regulation Zone (CRZ-I and CRZ-II), leading to opposition from environmentalists. In the auction, Bhagwati Empire quoted a maximum price of Rs 1.51 lakhs per sq meter for the plot. Subsequently, CIDCO decided to cancel the auction, citing concerns over the offered prices being relatively low.

Later, Navi Mumbai Environment Preservation Society (NMEPS) and a group of citizens, in separate petitions before NGT, challenged the tender process on the ground that the plot falls within CRZ1. In the second week of October 2023, the NGT observed that the Navi Mumbai Municipal Corporation (NMMC) Draft Development Plan published on 10.08.2022 no longer shows that plot No.2A is in a `No Development Zone’ but has been shown partly as a 'social facility’ and partly as a `garden’. Therefore, as per NMMC, the said area is shown to be a `social facility’ or a `garden’ area. However, the same was opposed by CIDCO. However, the NGT ordered that the said area should continue to be maintained or used for a `social facility’ or `garden’ instead of for raising any construction thereon.

Even the citizen group claimed that a thick patch of mangroves is located in close proximity to the plot and, in fact, part of the land is located within 50 meters of the mangrove buffer zone, the joint application by Rekha Sankhala, Manmeet Singh Khurana, Ritu Mittal, R K Narayan, Mahendra Singh Panghaal and Anjali Agarwal, said. Sankhala informed LokmatTimes.Com that their advocates will be present at the review petition for which the hearing is scheduled for Tuesday at NGT Pune.