India, May 3 -- In a major setback for the Brihanmumbai Municipal Corporation (BMC), the Bombay high court on Friday ordered the civic body to return the dumping ground at Kanjurmarg to its original condition - a mangrove forest - within three months. The division bench of justices GS Kulkarni and Somasekhar Sundaresan struck down as illegal the 2009 de-notification of the 120-hectare plot as forest land and its conversion into a landfill for violating procedures laid down under the Forest Conservation Act (FCA), 1980.

The court was hearing a plea filed by the nonprofit Vanashakti in 2013, which challenged the grant of environment clearance (EC) for a landfill on the plot adjacent to the Thane creek.

Though the plot was originally categ...