The Bombay High Court on Friday, May 2, once again declared 119.91 hectares of landfill land at Kanjurmarg in Mumbai as a protected forest. While delivering the order, the court quashed a notification issued by the Maharashtra government on December 29, 2009, which had excluded the area from protected forest status. However, the court granted the Brihanmumbai Municipal Corporation (BMC) a three-month time to identify an alternative site for waste disposal. Until then, the BMC will be permitted to use the Kanjurmarg landfill.
The state government's notification excluding the area from the protected forest was found to violate the Forest Conservation Act. A division bench of the High Court comprising Justice Girish Kulkarni and Justice Somashekar Sundaresan observed that the notification had been issued without obtaining the mandatory prior approval from the Central government.
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The land, part of a salt marsh area on the banks of Thane Creek, has seen natural mangrove growth and was categorised as Coastal Regulation Zone-I (CRZ-I) under environmental rules. After land verification and satellite imaging, the site was originally declared a protected forest through a July 2008 notification issued under Section 29 of the Indian Forest Act.
Later, the BMC and the state government attempted to repurpose the land for waste disposal based on a 2003 Supreme Court order that allowed relocation of the landfill from Chincholi Port to Kanjurmarg. However, the High Court ruled that this order did not consider forest conservation laws, mangrove growth, or the area's forest status. The bench held that the order could not be treated as conclusive in this context, and thus re-declared the 119.91 hectares as protected forest.
The state government had argued that the original forest notification was issued in error. The court rejected this claim, stating that the land had been classified as protected forest only after a proper survey, satellite imagery analysis, and land authentication. Therefore, the amended 2009 notification could not be justified as a simple correction.
Senior advocate Gayatri Singh and advocate Zaman Ali, representing the NGO Vanashakti, argued that scrapping the protected forest status was illegal as it bypassed mandatory legal procedures and lacked Central government approval. On the other hand, Advocate General Birendra Saraf, representing the state, argued that the mangrove cover was limited to 20.76 hectares across two separate patches and had been excluded from the landfill site. Based on these submissions, the court allowed the BMC a grace period of three months to relocate the landfill and refused the request of Additional Public Prosecutor Jyoti Chavan to stay the verdict.