The Central Vista redevelopment project which seeks to construct, modernise, upgrade and rationalise the use of buildings and spaces which contain the offices of the Union Government in the very heart of Lutyens’ Delhi while maintaining the overall aesthetic ambience of the area has been controversial from its inception.

But with Delhi High Court on Monday dismissing with costs of Rs 100,000 the purported Public Interest Litigation against the continuation of the project terming the PIL both motivated and not genuine, a quietus should now prevail on the issue. Especially, as the Supreme Court had already upheld the legality of the project.

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The misuse of PILs by activists of various stripes and cutting across political ideologies has been clogging up an already overburdened justice delivery apparatus for the past two decades. Of late, the court route, as it were, has been resorted to by political and ideological opponents of the ruling dispensation.

While there is no denying that everyone has the right to approach the courts for redressal of grievances, the imposition of costs and dismissal of the PIL against the continuation of the Central Vista project ought to have a salutary effect on the two-minutes-of-fame breed of petitioners who were, in essence, arguing for their aesthetic sensibility and political-ideological orientation to prevail over the will of the people as represented by a democratically elected government.

For, what other meaning can be ascribed to the submission made in court by counsel for the petitioners comparing the project site to the Nazi concentration camp at Auschwitz? It should also be borne in mind that while those against the project ~ and we are not necessarily speaking here of the petitioners and their counsel in the dismissed PIL ~ have put forth in the public sphere many arguments covering subaltern and colonial history, architectural aesthetics, nostalgia, urban spatial design, notions of high culture and the like to create a particular narrative which they subscribe to, the matter before Delhi High Court for adjudication was on the point that lives of construction workers on the project site were being allegedly endangered by making them work even as the Covid-19 pandemic raged.

It is this argument which was rather unceremoniously thrown out by Delhi High Court which held that redevelopment of the Central Vista was a “vital, and essential, national project.” The order stated that the Delhi Disaster Management Authority order does not prohibit construction work and given that the workers were staying on site with an aim to meet the projectcompletion deadline of November 2021, work should continue.

The government, meanwhile, has iterated that all Covid-19 protocols including vaccination are being rigorously followed at the site and none of the buildings of historical-cultural importance would be touched. It would be fair to say, against this backdrop, the Centre has a point when it claims the PIL was just a façade to stall a project not to the liking of some.