The Jayadev Vatika in Bhubaneswar. Picture by Sanjib Mukherjee

Cuttack, Oct. 31: Orissa High Court has extended its ban on felling of trees and acquisition of land for construction of handloom and handicraft museum in Jayadev Vatika area. The project is proposed to come up in close proximity to a prohibited archaeological site at Khandagiri in Bhubaneswar.

The two-judge bench of chief justice V.Gopal Gowda and justice Indrajeet Mohanty extended the interim ban on construction of the museum by two weeks after both central and state government failed to file their respective responses to notices issued by the court on September 23.

Among those issued notices for filing responses within four weeks included the Archaeological Survey of India and the state government. But counsels for both central and state government instead sought more time to file their counter affidavits when the case came up for hearing on Thursday. The bench allowed them two more weeks.

The project had come under judicial scrutiny after a petition was filed raising apprehensions that 10,000 trees of Jayadev Vatika will be felled if the proposed museum is allowed to come up.

Former MLA Dillip Srichandan has filed the petition invoking the provisions of the Environment (Protection) Act, 1986, Forest Act, 1972, Forest (Conservation) Act, 1980, and the Ancient Monuments and Archaeological Sites and Remains (Amendment and Validation) Act, 2010.

Petitioner counsel Siba Narayan Panda had contended that instead of conserving the existing forest cover, the government had decided to destroy a patch of forestland coming within the park for construction of the museum.

The case assumes significance as the state government had spent crores to develop the Jayadev Vatika since 1992. The general administration department had allotted 120 acres of land for the development of the park. Named after poet Jayadev, the park had been developed in lines of the descriptions of different groves in his Gita Govinda.

According to the petition, Jayadev Vatika has 162 species of trees, shrubs and creepers. The park has many rare and extinct medicinal plants. It is also an ecological habitat for birds, reptiles, beetles, butterflies, bees, insects and small animals.

Besides, the proposed site for the museum comes within 300 metres of archaeological sites Khandagiri and Udayagiri, where any kind of construction is prohibited.