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A big win for homebuyers in boom town near Mumbai. SC order on sanctuary clears confusion

Court exempted Tungareshwar Wildlife Sanctuary in Vasai-Virar from order mandating buffer zone around protected forests. The satellite town near Mumbai has been seeing real estate boom.

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Mumbai: The Supreme Court’s clarification that its 3 June order mandating a buffer zone around protected forests will not apply to the Tungareshwar Wildlife Sanctuary (TWLS), located in the satellite town of Vasai-Virar, has come as a big relief for homebuyers seeking affordable housing close to Mumbai. 

Vasai-Virar has been seeing a spurt of construction projects. In the last decade, significant developments in infrastructure and appropriately priced options compared to the other crowded coastlines of Mumbai have made Vasai a promising real estate destination.

The 3 June order by a three-judge bench of the Supreme Court (SC) had directed that each protected forest should have an Eco-Sensitive Zone (ESZ) of 1 kilometre starting from its demarcated boundaries. ESZs are created around protected forests, wildlife sanctuaries and national parks to minimise any negative impact on their fragile ecosystems. 

On Wednesday, a bench of justices B R Gavai and Vikram Nath, taking note of its earlier order passed in September, exempted the Tungareshwar sanctuary from the ESZ rule, thus allowing resumption of construction activity in the area.  

This came after the SC was, on 23 September, apprised about the finalisation of the boundary notification issued by the Union Ministry of Environment, Forest and Climate Change (MoEF&CC), demarcating boundaries of the Sanjay Gandhi National Park (SGNP) and the Thane Creek Flamingo Sanctuary (TCFS). The court had then clarified that wherever notifications had been issued by the ministry prior to its 3 June order will prevail.

The ministry notification regarding creation of an ESZ around the Tungareshwar sanctuary was issued in 2019. 

Amid confusion regarding the 3 June SC order and the ministry notification, the Confederation of Real Estate Developers’ Associations of India – Maharashtra Chamber of Housing Industry (CREDAI-MCHI), the apex body of real estate developers, filed an additional plea seeking clarification regarding the sanctuary. 

In a press statement, CREDAI-MCHI president Boman Irani welcomed Wednesday’s SC order, saying, “On behalf of the real estate fraternity, I thank the apex court for the clarification… This clarification is a huge relief not just for the developers but for the home buyers as well.”

However, the exact impact of how the industry will be benefited will be assessed only after reading the complete order of the SC, Irani told ThePrint.

Irani further said that while seeking exemptions for the TWLS, CREDAI-MCHI had pointed out the case of ESZ notifications for SGNP and Thane TCFS. 


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‘Construction activities had stopped’

Shailesh Puranik, MCHI vice-president and chairman, Puranik Builders Pvt Ltd., said, “…[T]his (3 June) order was for entire India and as far as these three national parks were concerned, due process of law was followed and ESZ was published as per the needs of the city.”

Samit Shukla, partner in Mumbai-based legal firm DSK Legal, who fought the matter in SC on behalf of CREDAI-MCHI, said, “Tungareshwar falls in the Vasai-Virar municipal area so a lot of development activities in the vicinity were impacted. And many projects stuck because of the 1 km order could now restart. This [order] will provide huge relief to around 6-7 lakh completed units and many more under-construction units in the area.”  

Many projects were ongoing by virtue of the final notification by the ministry and people had bought flats but the construction activities were stopped. For flats which were completed, [Vasai-Virar municipal] corporation was not handing out the occupancy certificates, hurting the homebuyers, Shukla said, adding: “This had resulted in chaos and anxiety amongst home buyers but now this has been put to rest.”

“In a dense city like Mumbai, many constructions happen around national parks and nothing anyway is permitted inside it and we are following the rules as well. So this blanket order was hurting real estate and other construction activity. But now this is good news,” said Puranik.

In such cases, where environmental activists and developers tend to take extreme positions, homebuyers become a victim, said Ashutosh Limaye, head-consulting, Anarock Property consultants, a leading real estate services company. “So this is a big positive for the homebuyers who are invested in those areas…the order comes as a sigh of relief for them.”

A booming real estate destination

The Mumbai Metropolitan Region (MMR) constitutes Mumbai city, Thane city, Navi Mumbai and Vasai-Virar municipal area. The Tungareshwar Wildlife Sanctuary, in Vasai area of Palghar district, is an important habitat for many animals including leopards.

In 2016, the Maharashtra government first had proposed an ESZ around Tungareshwar and Tansa Wildlife sanctuaries and had prepared a draft notification for the same by August that year. In December 2018, the apex court issued a directive that the environment ministry should declare ESZs around 21 national park and wildlife sanctuaries that do not have buffer zones. 

In 2019, the MoEF&CC had approved the final ESZ notification regarding TWLS.

The total protected area of TWLS is 85.70 sq km, and notified ESZ was spread across 67.26 sq. km with its radius ranging from 100 metres to 4 km around the boundary of the sanctuary.

According to the latest Quarterly Report of the MMR region released by Anarock, the Virar-Vasai region, which comes under the peripheral western suburbs of MMR, has seen highest new supply, contributing 3,634 units and 26 per cent share within the region.

Upcoming infrastructure projects like the metro, MMR Ring Road, bullet train and Delhi Mumbai Industrial Corridor (DMIC) are looked to enhance connectivity to the area. Prominent workplace locations in Mumbai — like Borivali, Goregaon, Andheri and Bandra Kurla Complex — are reachable within 50 minutes, which is another plus for the satellite city.

(Edited by Anumeha Saxena)


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