1 IN THE HIGH COURT OF JUDICATURE AT BOMBAY ORDINARY ORIGINAL CIVIL JURISDICTION NOTICE OF MOTION NO. 397 OF 2007 IN PUBLIC INTEREST LITIGATION NO. 87 OF 2006 The Bombay Environmental Action Group & Anr. ..................Petitioners Versus The State of Maharashtra & Ors. ............................Respondents. Mr. Gautam Patel, Senior Advocate, with Mr. Sharan Jagtiani i/by M/s. M.V. Jayakar & Co. for the Petitioners Mr. Ravi Kadam, Advocate General, with Mr. Niranjan Pandit, Assistant Government Pleader, for the State Mr. K.K. Singhvi, Senior Advocate, with Mr. S.S. Pakale and Ms. Shobha Ajitkumar for B.M.C. Mr. R.B. Raghuwanshi, Additional Solicitor General, with Ms. Rutuja Ambekar for Union of India. CORAM: B ILAL NAZKI and SMT. V.K. TAHILRAMANI, JJ. DATE: APRIL 29, 2009 P.C.:- This case has a long history and is going on in this Court for a long time, and then, it has gone even to the Supreme Court. 2 2. The crux of the matter is that the Municipal Corporation of Bombay is finding it difficult to dump the waste material generated on day-to-day basis in the City of Mumbai. According to Mr. Singhvi, senior counsel, 6500 Metric Tonnes of waste material is generated in the city per day. Therefore, it wanted a dumping site, and after a lot of litigations, the matter went to the Supreme Court, and the apex Court passed an order in Special Leave to Appeal (Civil) No. 18717 of 2001 on 21st November, 2003. The Supreme Court held:- “The Government of Maharashtra to hand over the 50% of the land admeasuring 141.77 hectares bearing Survey No. 275 (pt) within a period of 3 months from today at the Municipal Corporation of Greater Mumbai and on completion of all the formalities regarding transfer are over the said land to be used as dumping subject to strict observance of law relating to pollution and present dumping ground which is continuing at Chincholi Bunder Area shall be discontinued.” 3. Mr. Singhvi submits that an earlier order was passed by this Court in this petition, in which certain directions were given on 6th October, 2005. One of the directions was that the State shall identify the forest lands and accordingly notify them. After the Supreme Court’s order, land admeasuring 141.71 hectares in Survey No. 270 was allotted 3 by the Government to the Municipal Corporation, so that the land could be used as dumping ground in accordance with the directions of the Supreme Court. However, in pursuance of a direction of this Court that the land should be identified for being declared as “protected forest”, this land also was declared by a Notification to be “land falling under protected forest” in terms of the Forest Act. 4. Now, an application has been moved by the Bombay Municipal Corporation that the Notification issued by the State notifying this land to be “forest land”, which land has already been transferred to the Corporation in pursuance of the orders of the High Court, was a mistake. 5. The State has filed an affidavit, in which they have stated that inclusion of this piece of land in the Notification under the Forest Act was a mistake, and, therefore, the Corporation sought direction of this Court to the State to correct the mistake. 6. We have gone through the order of the Supreme Court and the order of this Court very carefully, and we observe that at no point of time, this Court or the Supreme Court had asked the State to notify this piece of land as forest land. The High Court has only directed the State 4 to identify forest lands, and accordingly notify them, and we understand that a particular land can be notified as protected forest land, subject to conditions laid down in the Forest Act and Rules made thereunder. Therefore, such a direction could not have been given by this Court. If the State has committed mistake in notifying land as forest land, they have ample powers to undo it, without seeking any permission from this Court. However, if such a course is taken by the State, and any person, including the petitioners in this case, have any grievance, they are at liberty to agitate it. 7. With these observations, this Notice of Motion is disposed of. 8. We make it clear that we have not gone into the issue whether a mistake was committed or not. BILAL NAZKI, J. SMT. V.K. TAHILRAMANI, J.