The Supreme Court on Tuesday refused to interfere with an order passed by the National Green Tribunal (NGT), upholding the Coastal Regulation Zone (CRZ) clearance granted for the construction of two additional residential floors at actor Shah Rukh Khan’s Mumbai residence, Mannat.
The Bench of Chief Justice of India (CJI) Surya Kant, Justice Joymalya Bagchi and Justice V Mohana rejected the appeal filed against the NGT’s Western Zone Bench order dismissing activist Santosh Daundkar’s challenge to the clearance granted by the Maharashtra Coastal Zone Management Authority (MCZMA).
Senior Advocate Shoeb Alam, appearing for the appellant, argued that the matter ought to be adjudicated purely on legal principles and environmental compliance rather than the respondent’s celebrity status. He submitted that the petitioner had earlier exposed the Adarsh Housing Society scam and sought a remand of the matter to the NGT for adjudication on merits, contending that the case raised substantial questions concerning environmental regulation and statutory compliance.
The Court, however, clarified that Shah Rukh Khan’s public profile had no bearing on its decision, with Justice Bagchi observing that the Bench was in no way influenced by the respondent’s stardom.
Chief Justice Surya Kant observed that the competent statutory authorities had already examined the proposal and found substantial compliance with the applicable legal and regulatory framework governing CRZ permissions. The Bench noted that the construction related to the respondents’ residential house and questioned why neighbours or third parties should interfere when the project broadly complied with the applicable environmental and planning laws.
The Chief Justice also expressed serious reservations regarding the bona fides of the petitioner, though counsel for the appellant pointed out that the NGT had not questioned the petitioner’s locus or bona fides. Declining the request to remand the matter, the Supreme Court found no ground to interfere with the Tribunal’s findings and dismissed the appeal.
The NGT had earlier held that the CRZ clearance dated January 3, 2025, did not suffer from any procedural irregularity, statutory violation, or legal infirmity. The Tribunal found that the proposal was confined to the vertical addition of the seventh and eighth residential floors above the existing six-storey structure, comprising a duplex residential unit connected through an internal staircase, and did not involve any horizontal expansion or encroachment into areas attracting fresh CRZ restrictions.
The Tribunal also rejected the petitioner’s allegations that the project was vitiated by earlier CRZ violations, unauthorised demolition of heritage structures without mandatory environmental clearance, incorrect classification of the property as CRZ-II instead of CRZ-IA, its alleged reservation for an art gallery, coastal erosion, groundwater extraction and previous construction activities. It held that none of these allegations established any illegality in the grant of the fresh CRZ clearance.
The NGT further recorded that the property falls within CRZ-II under the approved Coastal Zone Management Plan, 2019, and is situated on the landward side of an existing road. It noted that the Municipal Corporation of Greater Mumbai had sanctioned the building plans on November 7, 2024, while the Indian Remote Sensing Centre, Chennai, had certified the site’s CRZ classification.
Referring to the CRZ Notification, 2019, the Tribunal held that residential development is permissible in CRZ-II areas on the landward side of existing roads, subject to compliance with town planning regulations, Floor Space Index (FSI) norms and other statutory requirements, all of which were satisfied in the present case.
The Tribunal also observed that despite repeated opportunities during the hearing, the appellant failed to identify any procedural defect in the grant of the CRZ clearance and instead relied largely on allegations concerning earlier developments. It further noted that the earlier CRZ No Objection Certificate issued by the MCZMA in June 2008 had never been challenged and that the present proposal did not involve any fresh ground-level construction warranting additional CRZ scrutiny.
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