No EIA For Hill Tunnelling: Centre’s Stand Alarms Environmentalists

In a setback to environmentalists’ campaign to protect India’s fragile hill ecosystems, the Union government has asserted that tunnelling through hills for road projects does not require an Environmental Impact Assessment (EIA). Green groups say the disclosure exposes a serious regulatory gap at a time when campaigns to protect hill systems are intensifying nationwide, from the Himalayas to the Aravalli range, the Sahyadris and the Parsik Hills.

Public anger over rampant mining and hill destruction in the Aravallis has already drawn the attention of the Supreme Court, which has taken note of citizen outrage. The Centre’s position emerged from a response given by the Ministry of Environment, Forest and Climate Change (MoEFCC) to a query filed by the NatConnect Foundation. The query sought details of environmental clearance for the Rs2,100 crore KhargharTurbhe Link Road (KTLR), which cuts twin 1.8km tunnels through the ecologically sensitive Kharghar-Parsik hill stretch near Pandavkada in Navi Mumbai.

Citing the EIA Notification, 2006, the ministry stated that only national and state highways require prior environmental clearance, and that tunnels are not covered separately under the notification. The reply was signed by Amardeep Raju, Central Public Information Officer (Impact AssessmentInfrastructure), MoEFCC. The issue gained sharper focus after NatConnect learnt through another RTI application that the MoEFCC had approved the diversion of 26.3889 hectares of forest land for the KTLR at Owe village in Raigad district and at Shirvane and Kukshet in Thane district.

As the final forest clearance letter contained no reference to any environmental approval for tunnelling through the hills, I filed a separate application with the ministry’s West-Central Zonal Office. In its response, the zonal office categorically stated that it has no record of any Environmental Clearance granted for the tunnel component of KTLR. Environmentalists warn that the ministry’s position effectively throws hills open to rampant drilling and cutting, potentially allowing mining activity to be carried out under the same exemption.

Such an interpretation would directly undermine the National Green Tribunal’s rulings mandating environmental clearance for quarrying to protect hill ecosystems. Tunnelling by blasting and drilling is even more destructive and inevitably harms hill biodiversity. It is alarming that hill stability was being treated so cavalierly, ignoring hard lessons from repeated disasters. Tunnel collapses in Uttarakhand and Telangana, and landslides across several states, are stark reminders of the human cost of undermining geological and ecological safeguards.

Yet, instead of correcting regulatory blind spots, hills are being exploited with no environmental checks. Activists have raised particular concern about the Kharghar-Parsik stretch, which has been extensively quarried over the years. “Relentless blasting for stone chips has loosened the hill structure and weakened soil stability,” said environmental campaigner Jyoti Nadkarni. She pointed out that tunnel drilling is underway less than a kilometre from a massive illegal quarry operating behind the Tata Cancer Hospital at Kharghar.

(The author is director of NatConnect Foundation)