On Thursday, the Apex Court reserved its judgment on the fate of the Central Vista project, including the construction of a new Parliament building & Central Secretariat, which was challenged in ten separate pleas heard over 5 months on 24 occasions by a 3-Judge bench.
Oral arguments on these pleas came to a close on Thursday as the bench headed by Justice AM Khanwilkar was satisfied that it had heard the petitioners, the Central Govt led by Solicitor General Tushar Mehta, & the project consultant HCP Design, Planning & Management led by Senior Lawyer Harish Salve, on the broad issues of grant of environmental clearance, violation of statutory & municipal laws, conservation of heritage, change of land use under the Delhi Development Act, & manner of inviting public hearing & objections involved with the Central Vista Redevelopment plan.
The bench allowed all parties time till Nov 16 to submit written submissions or documents, if any, in support of their arguments.
On the final day of hearing, the Centre’s arguments came under spotlight as the bench asked the Solicitor General whether taking clearance from the Heritage Conservation Committee (HCC) will be a prerequisite before starting construction of the new Parliament building.
The HCC has been formed under the Unified Building By-Laws (UBBL)-Delhi, 2016 in order to protect & conserve heritage buildings, precincts & natural feature areas in the Capital. Parliament building & its campus along with North Block & South Block are Grade-I Heritage buildings.
The by-laws state, “No development or redevelopment or engineering operation or additions/alterations, repairs, etc., including painting of the building, shall be allowed except with prior permission of the concerned local authority, viz. DDA, MCD, NDMC as the case may be. Before granting permission, the local authority concerned shall consult the HCC.”
The Court made pointed queries to Mehta. “A new structure is being proposed 30 metres from the existing Parliament. Will not the skyline of the heritage building get disturbed? The by-laws provide no addition without HCC clearance. Will the new building not come under this definition,” asked the bench, also comprising Justices Dinesh Maheshwari & Sanjeev Khanna.
“Unless & until I am demolishing or carrying out any major engineering or alteration to the existing Parliament building, HCC clearance will not apply. The whole of Delhi is a heritage city. To preserve the aesthetic beauty & environment in Delhi, the Delhi Urban Arts Commission (DUAC) has been entrusted under law & this project has been cleared by DUAC,” said Mehta.
To date, the Government has not sought HCC clearance for the Parliament project, although environmental clearance has been obtained for going ahead with the new building’s construction. The Centre in its response to the court stated, “It would be wholly irrational to apply for the HCC permission without arriving at a stage wherein the micro details are available & the statutory authority can be prudently informed as to the details of the retrofitting (of existing Parliament).”
Senior Lawyers Shyam Divan, Sanjay Hegde & Shikhil Suri, representing the petitioners, rebutted the Centre on a host of submissions.
Divan said HCC applied to preservation of heritage precincts & not buildings per se. He said that to date, no document is available in public domain to show any study done to ascertain the need for a new Parliament & any attempt to obtain information under the Right to Information (RTI) Act has been stonewalled by the Government.
Before the tender for the Central Vista project was awarded to HCP Designs on September 2, 2019, no document was available in public domain, Divan said. Even the bench acknowledged that lack of transparency about the project was the major grievance of all petitioners.
On the Central Vista Committee being declared an advisory body by the Centre, senior advocate Sanjay Hedge argued it must be treated as a statutory body as without its go ahead, no work in the Central Vista can proceed. Suri stated neither Centre nor HCP Designs had responded to the charge of bias in the government awarding contract to HCP without conducting an extensive concept design competition.
Appearing for HCP, Salve said nobody has been specifically named & hence vague allegations of bias should not be gone into. No affidavit was filed by HCP but Salve argued that public participation in a project of this nature is already provided in our laws by the legislature. “These are policies that the courts cannot & should not venture into in the name of participative democracy.”
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