Following a series of monsoon disasters in the Indian Himalayan region, India’s Supreme Court drew the government’s attention to the execution of heavy infrastructural projects in the ecologically sensitive mountain region.
In its order dated September 23, a division bench of the apex court said it intends to frame “guidelines/measures to protect the citizens at large and the fragile ecological system” from heavy infrastructure projects in the Himalayan region.
Himachal Pradesh and other states in the Indian Himalayas “are facing a serious existential crisis,” it said.
The Indian Himalayan region, including sub-Himalayan regions, is spread across 13 states and federally administered Union Territories (UTs) and is home to nearly 50 million people. These include the states of Himachal Pradesh, Uttarakhand, Sikkim, and Arunachal Pradesh and the UTs of Jammu & Kashmir and Ladakh in the Himalayan region, and the states of Manipur, Meghalaya, Mizoram, Nagaland, Tripura and parts of Assam and West Bengal in the sub-Himalayan hills of east and northeast India.
The court order was issued in a Public Interest Litigation that the Supreme Court took up suo motu in the wake of recent natural disasters in Himachal Pradesh and J&K. While the order came in a case relating to Himachal Pradesh, any guideline that the apex court may frame can serve as a precedent and template, impacting developmental activities in other Himalayan states.
This year, India recorded its fifth wettest monsoon in a quarter of a century; rainfall was 8 percent above the long-term average. This was far from normal in the Himalayan region.
Himachal Pradesh received the heaviest monsoon rains in 29 years — 39 percent in excess of its average, and Uttarakhand received 22 percent above its long-term average rainfall. J&K, which experienced its driest year in five decades in 2024, recorded 41 percent excess rainfall between June 1 and September 3 this year.
Himachal Pradesh and J&K reported 141 and 139 fatalities, respectively — almost all of them caused by flash floods and landslides triggered by torrential rains.
Such disaster-related fatalities have become a routine in the Himalayas during the monsoon. In the February 2021 Chamoli disaster in Uttarakhand, a flash flood swept away a hydropower project, damaged another one, and took about 200 lives.
2023 was a year of disasters. In January, large swathes of land subsided in the Himalayan town of Joshimath in Uttarakhand. In October, a mega hydropower dam that was built in Sikkim despite repeated warnings of melting glaciers was washed away in a cloudburst-triggered glacial lake outburst flood (GLOF), claiming around 100 lives. In November, an under-construction road tunnel in Uttarakhand caved in, trapping 41 people, who were rescued 17 days later.
Amidst excess rainfall in the northern Indian Himalayas, there was a contrasting scene in the Northeast. Arunachal Pradesh received 41 percent less rain, and Meghalaya, one of the world’s wettest places in the eastern sub-Himalayas, recorded 43 percent deficient rainfall. Sikkim and West Bengal received 16 percent deficit rain.
Severe ecological and environmental imbalance and other environmental conditions exacerbated by human/developmental activities have led to serious natural calamities over a period of time, the apex court said in its recent report, pointing out that various expert reports have identified hydro power projects, four-lane roads, deforestation, and multistory buildings as among the major causes of vast destruction in Himachal Pradesh.
Calamitous Course
Extreme weather events like cloudbursts and glacial melts have grown in frequency due to the impact of climate change and these have increased the fragility of the Indian Himalayan and sub-Himalayan regions.
In this backdrop, a grand push for heavy development projects like highways, railways, tunnels, and large hydropower dams — not to forget the haphazard and unregulated urban development — has increased the impact of weather events manifold, leading to unprecedented disasters. Several major infrastructure development projects in Uttarakhand, Himachal Pradesh, Sikkim, Arunachal Pradesh, Ladakh and J&K merit mention in this regard.
Take the case of the Upper Siang Multipurpose Storage Project (USMSP), an 11-gigawatt project planned in Arunachal Pradesh that would be India’s biggest — five times bigger than the largest at present, the Lower Subansiri project along the Arunachal-Assam border. The Lower Subansiri dam itself has been hit by and blamed for flooding even before becoming fully operational.
Such projects in geologically and ecologically fragile regions amid climate change-inflicted increase in weather extremities and glacial melts are a recipe for disaster, environmentalists have alleged. However, federal and state governments in India have rarely heeded warnings.
Experts have been drawing attention to several problems with the Siang project. A 2018 paper noted an increasing anomalous rainfall pattern in the Tibetan plateau, lying just north of the Siang valley. A 2020 report, titled, “Preliminary Analysis of Glacial Lake having risk category-B in Arunachal Pradesh,” prepared by North Eastern Space Applications Center of the Indian government’s Department of Space, showed a glacial lake sprawled over 48.5 hectares beyond India’s northern boundary and having a southwest-ward flow direction towards the Siang river, a little more than 50 km from the lake. Numbered as NDMA111, it is categorized as “B,” reflecting ‘high risk.’ A 2021 research paper observed that the Siang valley is seismically active. A 2022 paper said that among 16 districts of Arunachal Pradesh, four districts — including Upper Siang — lie in the very high seismic hazard class.
The local population has strongly opposed the Siang project. Despite warnings issued by experts and local apprehensions, the government appears determined to execute the project as a matter of national priority, citing China’s planned dam on the other side of the Line of Actual Control.
Initially, the Supreme Court had not permitted the ambitious Char Dham highway project in Uttarakhand. However, the court subsequently cleared the project after the government cited it as a defense requirement.
Recently, a group of civil society members and politicians, including some veterans of India’s ruling Bharatiya Janata Party, appealed to the chief justice of India to “review and recall” the apex court’s 2021 judgment allowing the Char Dham road widening project.
According to the Indian Landslide Atlas, the majority of landslides are triggered by variability in rainfall patterns, apart from sporadic events like very heavy rainfall outside the monsoon period and earthquakes.
J&K, Himachal Pradesh, and Uttarakhand are the worst affected by landslides disasters.
India’s northeastern states also record landslide events around the year. However, the vulnerability in the northern states is higher due to high population densities, apart from major pilgrimage routes and tourism spots being exposed to and affected by landslides.
While addressing a press conference early in October, Sajjad Kargili, a politician from Ladakh, stressed that mega projects being planned should consider the fragile ecology of the Himalayan region. There should be local representation in determining these development policies, he stressed.
Residents of the hill station of Darjeeling in northern West Bengal have similar fears. The early October flash flood due to heavy rainfall in Nepal and Bhutan devastated large swathes of northern West Bengal, claiming over 30 lives.
A local journalist cited the case of a tourist, a 23-year-old university student from Kolkata, who remains missing since the night of October 4. He had set up a tent on a riverbank. The tent was washed away that night. “Given the current weather unpredictability, riverside camping or constructions should be strictly discouraged. But there is no norm or regulation,” said a journalist based in Darjeeling.
While the West Bengal state has announced a climate action plan for Kolkata, the state capital, there is no such up-to-date plan yet for the whole of the state—the existing one framed in 2012, is often considered inadequate—even as the state faces climate vulnerabilities in the sub-Himalayan region in the north as well as the Bay of Bengal in the south.
Now that the top court has asked Himachal authorities to frame an effective climate action plan, it’s time other states initiate such plans on their own.