Derek Achong

High Court judge Ron­nie Boodoos­ingh will de­cide to­day whether he will re­cuse him­self from hear­ing a case chal­leng­ing the con­struc­tion of the Debe to Mon De­sir high­way leg of the San Fer­nan­do to Point Fortin high­way.

Dur­ing a case-man­age­ment con­fer­ence at the Port-of-Spain High Court last week, state at­tor­neys made the re­cusal ap­pli­ca­tion to Boodoos­ingh. The law­suit was brought ear­li­er this year by an ac­tivist group, the High­way Re-route Move­ment. While ad­dress­ing at­tor­neys at a pre­vi­ous hear­ing, Boodoos­ingh said a rel­a­tive of his was one of the res­i­dents af­fect­ed by the pro­posed high­way.

Se­nior Coun­sel Rus­sel Mar­tineau, who is lead­ing the state's le­gal team, sub­mit­ted that Boodoos­ingh's dis­clo­sure would af­fect pub­lic per­cep­tion neg­a­tive­ly. How­ev­er, at­tor­neys rep­re­sent­ing the group dis­agreed, say­ing the pub­lic's per­cep­tion would re­main un­fazed if Boodoos­ingh re­mained as the judge in the case.

The group, which claims to have more than 600 fol­low­ers, is be­ing rep­re­sent­ed by six of its mem­bers in the law­suit: Dr Wayne Kum­baloi, Rizas Karim, Eliz­a­beth Ramshorns, Ra­mayana Bha­gavadgi­ta, Mal­colm Mon­ah and Al­me­na Mo­hammed.

In the law­suit, which was filed on Au­gust 3, the group is seek­ing a con­ser­va­to­ry or­der stop­ping con­struc­tion of the con­tro­ver­sial sec­tion of the bil­lion-dol­lar project.

It says it is not op­posed to the en­tire high­way ex­ten­sion project, but on­ly a spe­cif­ic seg­ment. The ob­jec­tors con­tend that the Gov­ern­ment con­tra­vened its con­sti­tu­tion­al rights to "life, se­cu­ri­ty, en­joy­ment of prop­er­ty, to free­dom of ex­pres­sion and free­dom of as­so­ci­a­tion."

As a sec­ondary is­sue, the group is seek­ing a de­c­la­ra­tion that the al­leged ac­tions of Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty Min­is­ter Jack Warn­er in de­stroy­ing their Debe protest camp on June 27 were il­le­gal. It al­so is seek­ing a stay of the evic­tion no­tices that were served on them un­der the Land Ac­qui­si­tion Act, pend­ing the de­ter­mi­na­tion of the mat­ter in the High Court.

The group, whose le­gal team is head­ed by Se­nior Coun­sel Ram­sey Lawrence Ma­hara­ja, SC, and Fay­dra Hos­bein, SC, is claim­ing that the seg­ment of the high­way is "de­struc­tive and con­trary to mod­ern plan­ning ap­proach­es to de­vel­op­ment."