Plea in Uttarakhand HC challenges 2025 amendment to Doon Valley Notification: ‘Destroys very essence'
A petition in the Uttarakhand High Court challenges the 2025 amendment to the Doon Valley Notification, 1989. According to the petition, the amendment undermines its objective and ignores the ecological sensitivity of the valley by allowing industries in the red category to operate.
A Division Bench of Chief Justice G Narender and Justice Alok Mahra Friday sought the government counsel to secure instructions on the same.
The petition, amended to incorporate a prayer to quash the gazette notification, filed by Congress leader Abhinav Thapar, claimed that the new amendment to the Doon Valley notification, 1989, which was notified on May 13, fails the original motive of the notification. The 1989 Doon Valley Notification, a significant instrument which classified industries based on pollution levels under green, red, and orange categories, and prohibited mining, change in land use, and grazing without the MoEF&CC nod in Doon valley.
The May amendment has given the state government the authority to approve tourism plan, grazing plan, master plan of development, land use plan, and any other plan, including zonal master plans. It also makes the orange category industries not covered under the Environment Impact Assessment Notification, 2006, to be considered by the Uttarakhand State Pollution Control Board. The amendment also makes orange category industries, which are now in the red category, continue, and expansion of such orange category industries falling in the schedule of the EIA notification to be allowed under conditions.
According to the petition, the amendment does not take into account the ecological sensitivity of the Doon Valley. 'It allows all the industries to work in the area whether it was originally there in the notification of 1989 or not, destroying the very essence of the notification…by this notification, all the industries which now fall under red category are allowed to operate, which fails the original motive of the notification of 1989,' it says.
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