Mumbai: A denizen of Mumbai has filed an intervention application in the Bombay high court to support the Coastal Road project. According to the application, the Coastal Road is needed to solve the traffic issues.

According to the application, there is a lack of facilities in the city. Lakhs of commuters travel by suburban trains, which are always overcrowded. Hundreds of people die in train accidents every month, and road transport takes two to three hours to reach Nariman Point from the suburbs.

The application has come out in support of the Coastal Road, stating that the destruction of mangroves and reclamation of land are inevitable for the project. The application has sought rejection of petitions against construction of the Coastal Road.

A division bench of Chief Justice Pradip Nandrajog and Justice N.M. Jamdar was hearing a bunch of petitions filed against the Coastal Road project, stating that the Municipal Corporation of Greater Mumbai (MCGM) had not taken requisite permissions for the project. According to the petitions, permissions in connection with the coastal regulation zone (CRZ), heritage committee, Wildlife Protection Act, and Environment Im-pact Assessment notification of 2011 were also required.

The petitioners’ counsel Janak Dwarkadas argued that prior permissions were mandatory before starting projects like the Coastal Road and the MCGM had not taken all the permissions. He also argued that the few permissions which had been taken were bad in law.

Advocate Dwarkadas told the court that according to the respondents, the petitions could not be challenged in the HC because if anyone wanted to challenge a CRZ permission, he had to file a complaint before the National Green Tribunal.