The Supreme Court held Delhi Development Authority guilty of contempt of court for unauthorized cutting of about 1,051 trees in the ecologically sensitive Delhi Ridge area without prior permission in violation of its own orders. The Court prefers multi-site afforestation over dependence on a single site.

A bench of Justices Surya Kant and N.K. Singh termed the felling a “wilful disobedience” of earlier directions and ordered significant remedial measures. The matter arose as a contempt petition arising from ongoing writ proceedings in M.C. Mehta v. Union of India (W.P.(C) No. 4677/1985) relating to conservation of the Ridge, in which the Supreme Court had passed an order on 9 May 1996 that henceforth no further encroachment upon the Ridge was allowed without specific judicial approval.

Here, the DDA had proceeded to widen an approach road to the Central Armed Police Forces Institute of Medical Sciences hospital and commenced tree-felling on 16 February 2024 without statutory permissions and after its own application was rejected by the Court on 4 March.

The Supreme Court held that while the objective of improving access to the hospital might be laudable, it did not excuse violation of the Court’s prior orders or the statutory regime under the Delhi Preservation of Trees Act, 1994 and related environmental obligations.

In light of the above, the Court ordered as follows: Every DDA official, except the Chairperson and the Vice-Chairperson, who ordered the felling of the trees, shall pay an “environment fee” of ₹25,000. The DDA has to undertake large-scale afforestation at the site under the supervision of a three-member committee comprising experts Ishwar Singh, Sunil Limaye and Pradip Krishen within the stipulated period. National Herald One-off levy to be imposed on the affluent residents of the Ridge area that benefit from the widened road as part of the remedial framework.

The proceedings are closed against certain senior officials including the Lieutenant-Governor who were found not to have been directly responsible, but the finding of contempt remains against the DDA as an institution. The ratio from this judgement makes it clear that public bodies cannot treat ecologically sensitive areas as mere convenient sites for expansion of infrastructure without judicial/statutory clearance, beforehand. Disobedience to the orders of the court invites contempt and activates monetary and institutional liability. It strengthens the environmental jurisprudence that even infrastructure projects relating to public purposes must conform to the procedural as well as substantive environmental safeguards.