Greens cheer as Essel’s work at Gorai is stopped 
TIMES NEWS NETWORK   22 April 05

Mumbai: Fishermen at Gorai are heaving a sigh of relief and the city greens are excited too. Thanks to a petition filed by the Gorai fisherfolk, the Bombay high court has restrained Subhash Chandra’s Essel Group from undertaking any further construction of the proposed Pagoda, v i p a s s a n a meditation centre and m o t o r abl e road bang in the middle of m a n g rove s around Esselworld. 
In an ad-interim order on Wednesday, a division bench of Justices H L Gokhale and S C Dhamadhikari put a temporary halt to all construction that was permitted on the basis of permissions already received from the police and the polluton control board. 
The Gorai Machchimar Sahkar Sanstha co-operative society limited, an organisation of the local fishermen, filed the petition after realising that bunds created by the Essel Group for construction purposes was cutting off water supply to the dense mangroves. Their petition said that the Essel Group wanted to build a road and a meditation centre where 10,000 people were expected. All the development would hamper the fishing activity in the area as water would recede further and hundreds of locals could be deprived of a living, the f i s h e r m e n pleaded. 
Ap a r t from the future survival of the mangroves, the fishermen were concerned about the effect of the construction on the existing water supply scarcity in Gorai village. The locals have been fighting for years for adequate supply of drinking water. They have also been protesting against the recent conversion of the area into an entertainment and tourist zone. 
Esselgroup will have to file its reply to the petition by June when the matter will next come up for hearing.

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