The Hous­ing De­vel­op­ment Cor­po­ra­tion (HDC) has re­quest­ed the ex­pe­di­tious de­ter­mi­na­tion of a law­suit over the En­vi­ron­men­tal Man­age­ment Au­thor­i­ty (EMA)’s de­ci­sion to grant it ap­proval for a hous­ing project near or on the site of the St Au­gus­tine Nurs­eries.

The HDC’s le­gal team re­quest­ed the ju­di­cial re­view when the law­suit, brought by en­vi­ron­men­tal­ist Dr Wayne Kublals­ingh and farmer Shi­raz Khan, came up for hear­ing be­fore Jus­tice Robin Mo­hammed yes­ter­day.

In her sub­mis­sions, Se­nior Coun­sel Deb­o­rah Peake, who led the HDC’s le­gal team, com­plained that her client was not served with the law­suit be­fore Jus­tice Mo­hammed grant­ed them leave to pur­sue it and a cor­re­spond­ing in­junc­tion in mid-Ju­ly.

Un­der the terms of the in­junc­tion, the HDC was barred from start­ing or con­tin­u­ing work on a hous­ing project at the site pend­ing the de­ter­mi­na­tion of the law­suit.

Peake sug­gest­ed that Jus­tice Mo­hammed should have heard sub­mis­sions from her client be­fore grant­i­ng the in­junc­tion, as it was di­rect­ly af­fect­ed.

“This is land vest­ed in the HDC and we are be­ing told we can­not ac­cess it. That can’t be fair and can­not meet the jus­tice of the case,” Peake said.

Dur­ing the hear­ing, the EMA’s lawyer Tekiyah Jorsling took is­sue with one of the four wit­ness­es Kublals­ingh and Khan’s lawyers are seek­ing to have the court con­sid­er as an ex­pert.

Jorsling said the wit­ness, a farmer, sought to make claims over the po­ten­tial side ef­fects of pes­ti­cides cur­rent­ly used at the fa­cil­i­ty, when he is not a med­ical doc­tor.

While Peake al­so ob­ject­ed to the farmer be­ing deemed an ex­pert wit­ness, she sug­gest­ed that the chal­lenge should be con­sid­ered by Jus­tice Mo­hammed when deal­ing with the sub­stan­tive sub­mis­sions in the case to save time.

Jus­tice Mo­hammed agreed and set dead­lines for the fil­ing of ev­i­dence and sub­mis­sions.

Oral sub­mis­sions are ex­pect­ed to be pre­sent­ed by the par­ties dur­ing a hear­ing on March 8.

Through the law­suit, Kublals­ingh and Khan are seek­ing to quash the Cer­tifi­cate of En­vi­ron­men­tal Clear­ance (CEC) which the HDC ob­tained from the EMA in Sep­tem­ber 2018.

Un­der the CEC, the HDC was grant­ed per­mis­sion to con­struct 12 eight-sto­ry apart­ment build­ings with 504 apart­ments on 17.4 acres of land oc­cu­pied by the nurs­eries in Curepe, which falls un­der the Min­istry of Agri­cul­ture and sup­plies high-qual­i­ty plant­i­ng ma­te­r­i­al to farm­ers.

In the law­suit, the duo is claim­ing the EMA should have re­quest­ed that the HDC per­form a com­pre­hen­sive en­vi­ron­men­tal im­pact as­sess­ment be­fore grant­i­ng the CEC be­cause of the po­ten­tial per­ma­nent neg­a­tive im­pacts of the project.

In op­pos­ing the duo be­ing grant­ed leave to pur­sue the case, the EMA chal­lenged their de­lay in fil­ing it and claimed that it would be prej­u­di­cial and detri­men­tal to good ad­min­is­tra­tion, as it would fur­ther de­lay a much-need­ed pub­lic project for mid­dle and low-in­come fam­i­lies.

It al­so claimed that the duo did not raise any ar­guable grounds which may have a re­al­is­tic prospect of suc­cess at an even­tu­al tri­al.

In grant­i­ng leave to pur­sue the case, Jus­tice Mo­hammed re­ject­ed the EMA’s com­plaint over the de­lay, as he not­ed that while it should have been filed soon­er, the duo was not out­side the three-month dead­line for do­ing so.

“Notwith­stand­ing the im­por­tance of the project and the like­ly ad­min­is­tra­tive costs in­curred thus far, I do not find that there has been un­due de­lay in mak­ing this ap­pli­ca­tion,” Jus­tice Mo­hammed said.

He al­so stat­ed that a pre­lim­i­nary analy­sis of the grounds raised by the duo showed that the case was not weak, as con­tend­ed by the EMA.

Deal­ing specif­i­cal­ly with the duo’s claim that the EMA is­sued the CEC with­out full and ac­cu­rate in­for­ma­tion on the im­pact of the project, Jus­tice Mo­hammed said: “Giv­en my above find­ings that there is ev­i­dence to sug­gest that the EMA may have con­sid­ered in­ac­cu­rate and de­fi­cient in­for­ma­tion pro­vid­ed by the HDC in mak­ing its de­ter­mi­na­tion on the ap­pli­ca­tion, I con­clude that this ground has a re­al­is­tic prospect of suc­cess.”

Kublals­ingh and Khan were rep­re­sent­ed by Di­nesh Ram­bal­ly, Kiel Tak­lals­ingh, Ste­fan Ramkissoon and Ra­jiv Sochan. Ian Ben­jamin, SC and Mau­rice Wishart are ap­pear­ing along­side Jorsling for the EMA. The HDC is al­so be­ing rep­re­sent­ed by Ravi Heffes-Doon and An­dre Rud­der.