
Supreme Court greenlights work of Metro Phase IV after DMRC assurance
With the Delhi Metro Rail Corporation (DMRC) agreeing to 'strictly abide' by the conditions set by the Supreme Court-appointed Central Empowered Committee (CEC), the top court on Tuesday allowed the Corporation to go ahead with the construction work for Phase IV of the Delhi Metro. The bench had earlier asked the CEC to examine the DMRC's request for permission to undertake the work.
Even as it has given a nod to the construction in the ecologically sensitive morphological ridge area, the CEC has set 10 conditions, underlining the need to safeguard trees, a report revealed. The Phase IV of the Delhi Metro construction that will cover 28,685 square metres of protected area, includes parts near Jhandewalan and Pushpa Bhawan, stated the CEC report dated April 25.
The DMRC has to safeguard trees and take prior permission under the Delhi Preservation of Trees Act for felling or pruning; deposit 5% of the project cost with the Ridge Management Board for conservation efforts.; plant 1,280 indigenous trees on non-forest land as compensation, and transplant affected trees under expert supervision. These are among the conditions underlined by the panel. (see box)
In Phase IV, two metro corridors — Inderlok to Indraprastha and Lajpat Nagar to Saket G Block — are set to cut through the land identified as having features similar to the Ridge, a rocky outcrop of the Aravallis that plays a crucial ecological role in Delhi and is protected through court rulings.
While the first corridor affects around 20,915 square metres of ridge-like land and 122 trees, the second corridor, after design revisions, will use 7,770 square metres and avoid felling any trees, requiring only the pruning of six. In its proposal, the DMRC had stated that the corridors were approved by the Union Cabinet in March 2024 and are scheduled to be commissioned by 2029. For this, works for the construction of civil works had to start by April, it said.
The report revealed that the CEC pulled up DMRC for non-compliance in the expansion phases earlier. In one such violation that it flagged, DMRC started construction on forest land in 2020 between Janakpuri and Mukarba Chowk without prior clearance. A notice was issued to then Chief Project Manager C P Singh for violation of the Forest (Conservation) Act, 1980. However, no reply was received. To this, the CEC in its latest report recommended 'legal action' by Ministry of Environment, Forest and Climate Change of India (MoEFCC) against Singh.
Highlighting another instance of non-compliance, the CEC noted that the DMRC failed to complete a Supreme Court-mandated Ridge Interpretation Centre near Patel Chowk Metro Station, which was planned to educate the public on Ridge's ecology. However, the panel also observed that the status of progress is 'satisfactory', as DMRC has mentioned this would be completed by April 2026.
On Tuesday, Solicitor General Tushar Mehta, appearing for the DMRC, told a bench of Justices B R Gavai and A G Masih that it will abide by the conditions set by the panel. The bench in its order underlined, 'Solicitor General Tushar Mehta says DMRC would strictly abide by the above conditions. In that view of the matter, the application (by DMRC) is allowed. However, it is directed that the DMRC shall scrupulously comply with the conditions as imposed by the CEC.'
The Ridge Management Board (RMB) was constituted in October 1995 following a Supreme Court order. The Board had become the nodal body for allowing any diversion of land for non-forest use on the Ridge. Its domain was extended to the Morphological Ridge also.
The legal status of morphological ridge was reinforced through various judicial rulings, including a Delhi High Court order in a 2011 case, wherein the court upheld that any construction in such areas requires approval from the Ridge Management Board or the Supreme Court-appointed CEC in 2002.
Hashtags

Try Our AI Features
Explore what Daily8 AI can do for you:
Comments
No comments yet...
Related Articles


New Indian Express
37 minutes ago
- New Indian Express
Compensate private schools for RTE seats using state funds: TN BJP president Nainar Nagenthran
TIRUNELVELI: A day after the Madras High Court held that the union government's obligation to disburse its share of funds under the Right to Education (RTE) Act is an independent responsibility, TN BJP president Nainar Nagenthran on Wednesday said Chief Minister MK Stalin should compensate private schools using state funds. 'The chief minister often says he can manage the government without central funds. He should ensure payment to schools for RTE admissions using state resources,' he told reporters. Responding to another question, Nagenthran said AIADMK general secretary Edappadi K Palaniswami would be NDA's chief minister in 2026. Also, he hinted that talks are on with a party that is currently in the DMK alliance. Commenting on the law and order situation in Tamil Nadu, the BJP leader said it is deteriorating. 'Incidents such as sexual assaults, murders, and crimes committed under the influence of ganja reflect the worsening situation,' he alleged. On the delay in releasing the Keezhadi excavation report, Nagenthran said he would take up the matter with the Union government.


Indian Express
an hour ago
- Indian Express
Chandigarh PG medical seats to stay with all-India pool, says High Court
The Punjab and Haryana High Court has upheld the Chandigarh administration's decision to reallocate vacant Union Territory (UT) quota seats in postgraduate (PG) medical courses to the All India Quota (AIQ), rejecting a challenge from candidates who argued the move violated a Supreme Court judgment. A division bench of Justice Mahabir Singh Sindhu and Justice H.S. Grewal dismissed the petition filed by Avijit Chander and others, who had opposed a June 3 notification that diverted unfilled UT Pool seats at Government Medical College and Hospital (GMCH), Chandigarh, to the AIQ pool. The petitioners had argued these seats should have gone to the Institutional Preference (IP) category under the state quota for local candidates. Their counsel, senior advocate Gurminder Singh, said, 'While taking a complete U-turn… without any authority of law and also in complete violation of Shrey Goel's judgment, respondent No. 2 has issued the impugned public notice… wherein vacant U.T. Pool seats have been diverted to A.I.Q. against [the] maximum limit of 50%.' But the court found no merit in the claim, ruling that the matter of residence-based reservation in PG medical courses had already been settled by the Supreme Court. 'This Court is not persuaded with the arguments raised by learned senior counsel… the legal issue has already been adjudicated,' said Justice Sindhu. The case has its roots in the Supreme Court's January 29 verdict in Dr. Tanvi Behl v. Shrey Goel & Others, which struck down the practice of reserving PG medical seats on the basis of residence in UT Chandigarh. The apex court had ruled that such a reservation was 'not permissible', but allowed students already admitted or graduated to remain unaffected. Following this, the Chandigarh administration initially said in April that vacant UT Pool seats would be moved to the IP category. However, in a fresh notice on June 3, it reassigned them to the AIQ instead, sparking the present legal challenge. The petitioners argued that the administration's about-turn violated both the letter and spirit of the Supreme Court ruling and exceeded the 50% limit allowed for AIQ seats. But the high court noted that the seat matrix – 75 for AIQ and 76 for State Quota (plus four EWS) – remained within permissible limits, and that the reallocation aligned with the Supreme Court's broader emphasis on merit-based admissions. 'Consequently, there is no option, except to dismiss the petition,' the bench concluded in its order, delivered on June 10.


Indian Express
an hour ago
- Indian Express
33% seat reservation: Govt looks at quota for women in next Lok Sabha polls
The Modi government intends to roll out reservation of seats for women, which is linked to the delimitation exercise, in the 2029 Lok Sabha elections, highly-placed sources said Wednesday. Official sources said the government is targeting implementation of the Nari Shakti Vandan Adhiniyam that reserves one-third of seats for women in the Lok Sabha and state assemblies in the next election. 'The Census has been announced and the other steps will follow. The women's reservation Bill is linked to the delimitation process. We are aiming to roll it out in the next election,' sources in the government said. According to the Constitution (One Hundred and Twenty-Eighth Amendment) Bill, 2023, the Nari Shakti Vandan Adhiniyam, passed in September 2023, reservation of one-third of seats for women in Lok Sabha and state Assemblies shall come into effect after an exercise of delimitation is undertaken based on figures from the first Census that is conducted after the enactment of the Act. Earlier this month, the government announced that the process of data collection for the Census, along with caste enumeration, would commence next year and offer a snapshot of the country's population as on March 1, 2027. For women's reservation to become a reality in the next Lok Sabha elections, delimitation will have to be completed well in time for the Election Commission of India to conduct the 2029 polls on the basis of the new delimitation of constituencies. Government sources claimed that the Census data will be available faster than the previous time with the advancement of technology – the enumeration will be conducted digitally using mobile applications for data collection and a central portal to collate the details and manage it. The Census data is significant for delimitation because the process of readjusting the seats of Lok Sabha and state Assemblies and redrawing their territorial boundaries is expected to be launched once the data is available. There have been concerns among southern states regarding delimitation changing the proportion of seats allocated to various states in Lok Sabha to conform to the constitutional principle of 'one person, one vote, one value', which will lead to a jump in seats for the northern states where populations have grown briskly since 1971 and reduce the relative weight of southern states where the population rate has slowed down in the same period. Senior ministers have said that the concerns expressed by the southern states will be addressed, and that no room for complaints will be left. In February this year, Union Home Minister Amit Shah had said that the southern states would not lose even a single seat on a pro-rata basis, making A Raja of the DMK ask whether pro-rata meant population-based or based on the present number of constituencies. Later, at the RSS's Akhil Bharatiya Pratinidhi Sabha meet at Bengaluru, RSS joint general secretary K Mukunda said the share of seats of the southern states would be maintained as it is in case the number of Lok Sabha seats is increased via delimitation. However, NDA ally Upendra Kushwaha has already made 'justice for Bihar', through allocation of seats as per present population share, as a poll plank for the Bihar Assembly elections, taking the line multiple times in Bihar and Delhi. For delimitation to happen after the next Census, Parliament will have to pass a Delimitation Act, which will constitute a Delimitation Commission for the exercise that is likely to lead to an increase in Lok Sabha seats. Article 82 of the Constitution mandates readjustment of seats after every Census. However, the present Lok Sabha reflects the population figures of the 1971 Census because the delimitation of seats was frozen in 1976 for 25 years, and in 2001 for another 25 years, through Constitutional amendments, with the Vajpayee government stating in 2002 that this would provide an incentive for family planning. If another Constitutional amendment is not passed by Parliament by 2026, the freeze on delimitation will automatically be over. Under Article 81(2) (a) of the Constitution, 'there shall be allotted to each State a number of seats in the House of the People in such manner that the ratio between that number and the population of the state is, so far as practicable, the same for all States'. The only exception to this rule are small states whose population do not exceed six million.