HC reserves order on plea for BRT verdict review
22 Nov 2012 11:41 PM GMT
The Delhi high court reserved its order on Wednesday on a plea for review of its earlier order, which had dismissed a petition for scrapping a bus rapid transit (BRT) corridor in South Delhi.
A bench of justices Pradeep Nandrajog and Manmohan Singh reserved the order on the review plea after hearing arguments from various parties.
Appearing for the Delhi government, senior counsel K T S Tulsi submitted that the court should dismiss the review petition as the petitioner NGO did not mention in its main petition the ground of violation of master plan for scrapping the BRT corridor.
The review petition, filed by NGO Nyay Bhoomi through its President B B Sharan, said, ‘MPD 2021 is a statutory plan and has the force of law. As per the master plan, the BRT cannot exist on a road less than 45 metres in width.
‘Under the master plan of Delhi 2012, BRT is conceived on the road segment where the total width of road is 45 metres and above. However, this court has inadvertently computed 45 metre equal to 100 feet, whereas 45 meters comes to be about 150 feet...’
While dismissing the PIL earlier, the high court had said, ‘There being no scope to expand the width of the existing roads and the population of Delhi continuously being on rise, we see no escape from the fact that the citizens of Delhi have to, one day or the other, use public transport.
‘On said reason also, it cannot be said implementation of BRT corridors in the city of Delhi is an irrational decision,’ the court had said.
After conducting a trial run allowing mixed traffic on the bus lane in May 2012, the CRRI had submitted before the bench its survey report criticising the BRT corridor. The Delhi government, however, had opposed the CRRI report saying ‘the government needs to analyse the report as it had considered the value of time for the car users only and had ignored the value of time for the bus users.’ According to Nyay Bhoomi’s plea, for smooth traffic flow on the corridor between Ambedkar Nagar and Moolchand, the government should not restrain any vehicle from plying on the bus lane.
A bench of justices Pradeep Nandrajog and Manmohan Singh reserved the order on the review plea after hearing arguments from various parties.
Appearing for the Delhi government, senior counsel K T S Tulsi submitted that the court should dismiss the review petition as the petitioner NGO did not mention in its main petition the ground of violation of master plan for scrapping the BRT corridor.
The review petition, filed by NGO Nyay Bhoomi through its President B B Sharan, said, ‘MPD 2021 is a statutory plan and has the force of law. As per the master plan, the BRT cannot exist on a road less than 45 metres in width.
‘Under the master plan of Delhi 2012, BRT is conceived on the road segment where the total width of road is 45 metres and above. However, this court has inadvertently computed 45 metre equal to 100 feet, whereas 45 meters comes to be about 150 feet...’
While dismissing the PIL earlier, the high court had said, ‘There being no scope to expand the width of the existing roads and the population of Delhi continuously being on rise, we see no escape from the fact that the citizens of Delhi have to, one day or the other, use public transport.
‘On said reason also, it cannot be said implementation of BRT corridors in the city of Delhi is an irrational decision,’ the court had said.
After conducting a trial run allowing mixed traffic on the bus lane in May 2012, the CRRI had submitted before the bench its survey report criticising the BRT corridor. The Delhi government, however, had opposed the CRRI report saying ‘the government needs to analyse the report as it had considered the value of time for the car users only and had ignored the value of time for the bus users.’ According to Nyay Bhoomi’s plea, for smooth traffic flow on the corridor between Ambedkar Nagar and Moolchand, the government should not restrain any vehicle from plying on the bus lane.
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