KATHMANDU: The forest clearance row related to Nijgadh International Airport has reached another level with the Supreme Court’s (SC) interim order on Sunday.
A joint bench of Chief Justice (CJ) Cholendra Shumsher Rana and Justice Kumar Regmi issued the ‘interim’ order to halt the felling of trees at the construction site of the airport.
The SC issued the orders acting on a writ petition filed by senior advocate Krishna Prasad Bhandari, and nine others demanding certiorari on the issue blaming the authority for clearing more trees than actually required. They had cited the environmental impacts of the clearance.
According to the SC source, the interim order was issued to let the things status quo unless other writs of similar nature were handled together.
Earlier, the supreme judiciary authority had demanded the government answer in written the need to execute the act. The government has not submitted any answered to SC yet.
The petitioners had in their petition claimed that millions of trees — several 500 to 600 years old — will have to be felled for the construction of the airport.
They had requested the apex body to direct the concerned authorities to stop environmental destruction in the name of development.
The government is working on a plan to construct the Nijgadh Airport mainly to develop it as an air transit for 22 neighboring countries and handling around 15 million air passengers annually.
The Nijgadh International Airport has also been seen as an alternative to address the increasing congestion at the Tribhuvan International Airport (TIA), the country’s only international airport.
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