High court stops work at Adani Port and SEZ project

The order of division bench of acting Chief Justice Bhaskar Bhattacharya and Justice J B Pardiwala came upon a PIL filed by villagers of Navinal in Kutch district.

The high court also refused to stay its order.

"When law requires a thing to be done in a particular manner, the same must be done in the same manner or not done at all. The law envisages that no construction, preliminary or otherwise, can be undertaken without environmental clearance therefore, there is no reason why we should permit construction to go ahead," the court said in the order.

The villagers, led by Ranubha Jadeja, have filed the PIL against the APSEZ for occupying the 'gau-char' (grazing) land.

Though the APSEZ has not received environmental clearance, it has leased out plots to several companies and Alstom Bharat Forge Power Limited has started construction, the PIL says.

Alstom Bharat Forge Power Limited's lawyers had argued that it did not require environment clearance.

Meanwhile, Adani Group said in a statement that the order would not affect ongoing port operations and port development activities at Mundra for which the company had requisite environmental clearance. It, however, admitted that it had yet to get environmental clearance for the SEZ.