High Court reserves judgment on BRT
26 Sept 2012 5:03 AM IST
On Monday, the Delhi high court reserved an order on a petition seeking the scrapping of the 5.8-kilometre-long Bus Rapid Transport [BRT] corridor, running between Ambedkar Nagar and Moolchand Hospital. Crucially, it observed that the car users could not be punished for not opting public transport system.
A bench of justices Pradeep Nandrajog and Manmohan Singh made the remark while hearing the petition of the non-governmental organisation Nyaya Bhoomi after the lawyer Prashant Bhushan argued that unless car users were punished, they would not shift to public transport system.
‘It is a wrong way of forcing [car users and others who use personal vehicles] to shift to public transport system and discourage the use of private cars..,’ observed the judges. The slow-moving traffic on the BRT stretch created problems for car users and others, who do not opt for the buses and they could not be punished to shift to public transport, the bench said, while reserving the order after hearing four hours.
During the hearing the lawyer for the Delhi government K T S Tulsi was not present in the court, which the court did not approve of. It said, ‘He should have been here to assist the court.’
Earlier, the court had reversed its earlier order and allowed buses to ply again on lanes reserved for them on the BRT corridor. Currently, on the interim order of the high court, buses are plying in the lanes reserved for them from 15 September. Before that, another bench, in the interim order, had allowed the mixed use of the BRT corridor on experimental basis.
B B Sharan of NGO Nyaya Bhoomi, in his arguments, referred to a survey report of Central Road Research Institute [CRRI] on the functioning of the BRT and sought its scrapping on the ground that it was harassing the commuters and was complete wastage of the public money. Sharan also referred to the Delhi Master Plan to drive home his point that a dedicated BRT corridor cannot be implemented on narrow roads as it would hardly leave any space for other vehicles.
At the start of the proceedings, Justice Nandrajog asked the NGO to cite case laws to establish that the plea was maintainable. ‘The decision is a policy decision of the executive. How can it be the subject matter of a PIL?,’ it asked.
‘Right to equality [in using the road space] has been infringed by denying the car and other vehicle users the requisite road space. 45 per cent road space has been eaten away by the BRT alone,’ Sharan replied.
A bench of justices Pradeep Nandrajog and Manmohan Singh made the remark while hearing the petition of the non-governmental organisation Nyaya Bhoomi after the lawyer Prashant Bhushan argued that unless car users were punished, they would not shift to public transport system.
‘It is a wrong way of forcing [car users and others who use personal vehicles] to shift to public transport system and discourage the use of private cars..,’ observed the judges. The slow-moving traffic on the BRT stretch created problems for car users and others, who do not opt for the buses and they could not be punished to shift to public transport, the bench said, while reserving the order after hearing four hours.
During the hearing the lawyer for the Delhi government K T S Tulsi was not present in the court, which the court did not approve of. It said, ‘He should have been here to assist the court.’
Earlier, the court had reversed its earlier order and allowed buses to ply again on lanes reserved for them on the BRT corridor. Currently, on the interim order of the high court, buses are plying in the lanes reserved for them from 15 September. Before that, another bench, in the interim order, had allowed the mixed use of the BRT corridor on experimental basis.
B B Sharan of NGO Nyaya Bhoomi, in his arguments, referred to a survey report of Central Road Research Institute [CRRI] on the functioning of the BRT and sought its scrapping on the ground that it was harassing the commuters and was complete wastage of the public money. Sharan also referred to the Delhi Master Plan to drive home his point that a dedicated BRT corridor cannot be implemented on narrow roads as it would hardly leave any space for other vehicles.
At the start of the proceedings, Justice Nandrajog asked the NGO to cite case laws to establish that the plea was maintainable. ‘The decision is a policy decision of the executive. How can it be the subject matter of a PIL?,’ it asked.
‘Right to equality [in using the road space] has been infringed by denying the car and other vehicle users the requisite road space. 45 per cent road space has been eaten away by the BRT alone,’ Sharan replied.
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