Mumbai, May 2 (PTI) The Bombay High Court on Friday restored the status of 120 hectares of land in Kanjurmarg area here as "protected forest", setting aside a 2009 notification that had changed it for the creation of a dumping ground.
A division Bench of justices Somasekhar Sundaresan and G S Kulkarni refused to accept the state and the Mumbai civic body's contention that an earlier notification classifying the area as a forest was a "mistake".
"In view of the forest notification having been a product of specific and clear factual review, the impugned notification to exclude 119.91 hectares of land by re-issuing the forest notification by way of a corrigendum, deserves to be quashed and set aside," the court said.
The notification changing the land's status was "unsustainable and in conflict with the requirement of law governing de-reservation of a forest", said the high court.
The due process stipulated under the Forest Conservation Act for de-notifying a forest was not followed, the judges said, giving the Brihanmumbai Municipal Corporation (BMC) three months to comply with the order.
The court was hearing a petition filed in 2013 by Vanashakti, a public trust, challenging the de-notification of land located at village Kanjur which was classified as a protected forest.
The Union Ministry of Environment and Forests (MOEF) had granted environment clearance to the project in March 2009 for setting up a garbage dump.
But the ministry did not consider material establishing that it was a "protected forest", the petitioner said.
The BMC had argued that the new notification merely corrected an error in the forest notification.