Pune: A sessions court has quashed and set aside Pune chief judicial magistrate (CJM)’s order of Dec 7, 2015, against a realty firm and its partner for alleged violation of environmental clearance norms required for construction involving more than 20,000 sqm built up area.MPCB had filed a complaint before the CJM on the grounds that the builder started construction of a residential project in Handewadi and then applied for environmental clearance, which should have been taken before the works began. The CJM upheld this and passed an issue process order, which means the court has taken cognisance of the matter by prima facie finding enough reasons to begin a criminal proceeding.The realty firm moved the sesssions court against this, arguing that an application for environmental clearance was filed only because the state increased the permissible FSI. Otherwise, there was no reason for such an application.The sessions court referred to the evidence and documents on record and held: “It clearly shows that the applicants, before starting the work, never had any intention to carry out the construction beyond permissible limit and apply for environmental clearance later. Even otherwise it is informed by the parties that till today the govt of Maharashtra has not granted environmental clearance and the same is still pending. Thus, there was no sufficient material before the learned magistrate to come to the conclusion that prima facie case was made out against the applicants.”The court held: “No criminal proceedings can be allowed to continue when there is no material against the accused and specifically when the nonapplicant no. 1 is uncertain as to whether the applicants have exceeded the prescribed limit or not. The learned trial court while issuing process on the basis of the complaint failed to see that there was no sufficient material even to issue process against them. The basic ingredients of alleged offences are not made out even prima facie and continuance of proceedings against the applicants would amount to abuse of process of law.“
