By Syed Sammar Mehdi

India's top environmental court has put the brakes on a multimillion-dollar industrial project in Kashmir after an activist warned that building factories on the edge of the Rambiara River could spell disaster for villages downstream.

On Wednesday, a three-judge bench of the National Green Tribunal issued formal notice to the Jammu and Kashmir government, asking officials to explain why they approved a 500-kanal (about 63-acre) industrial estate in Trenz village, Shopian district, on land the petitioner says lies squarely in the river's natural floodplain.

The petition was filed by Raja Muzaffar Bhat, a well-known Kashmiri RTI activist. He argues that the site chosen by the Jammu and Kashmir State Industrial Development Corporation is barely 30 meters from the riverbank and sits in the exact path where high floodwaters spill during the rainy season.

“If this estate comes up, it will act like a dam on one side of the river,” Bhat's lawyer, Saurabh Sharma, told the bench headed by Justice Prakash Shrivastava.

“The water will have nowhere to go except across the opposite bank, drowning homes, farms, and the famous apple orchards that feed dozens of villages in Shopian and Pulwama.”

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