SC notice to Centre on GQ alignment change

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New Delhi, Feb 23 : The Supreme Court on Friday issued notices to the Centre and West Bengal government on a petition challenging the change of the originally conceived route alignment pertaining to the East-West corridor of the Golden Quadrilateral project, launched by the NDA government in 2002.

A special bench headed by Chief Justice K G Balarkrishnan also asked the Central Environment Committee to examine the implication of the reported change and submit a report to it. The petition, filed by the Dooar East-West Corridor Movement Committee through counsel M L Lahoty, alleged that the alignment had been changed by vested interests due to political compulsions and would seriously affect the country’s defence preparedness.

Lahoty submitted that the corridor which runs through a stretch of 366 km between West Bengal and Assam was designed on the advice of the defence ministry experts as the expansion covered strategically-significant borders areas involving Sikkim, Darjeeling, Bhutan and the Nathuala Pass linking China.

As per the original plan the route was to start from Islampur, Bagdora, Siliguri, Dooraj areas in West Bengal to Alipur Dwar in Assam.

The defence ministry, according to the petition, wanted such an alignment as it could be strategically useful in case of any border skirmishes.

However, it was alleged that UPA government had changed the alignment by diverting the route towards Jalpaiguri, Mayagudi, Cooch-Behar and Thufangi areas of West Bengal due to political reasons.