MUMBAI, June 7 -- The Bombay high court on Friday struck down the decision of a village panchayat in Sangli to cancel a no-objection certificate (NOC) granted for the construction of a mobile phone tower on the grounds that it was a potential health hazard. A division bench of justices GS Kulkarni and Advait Sethna said that there was no scientific material to support the claim that the radiation from mobile towers is a health hazard. Therefore, it added, the decision of the Tanang village panchayat to cancel the NOC granted to Indus Tower Limited to construct the tower and order it to stop construction work at the site was taken "purely on surmises and conjectures". According to the petition filed by Indus Tower, a licensed mobile network infrastructure provider, it had identified a location in Tanang village to set up a mobile tower after a technical survey, with an aim to improve network connectivity in the area. After leasing the plot from the landowner, the company approached the village panchayat for an NOC to construct the mobile tower. In November 2023, the panchayat passed a resolution to issue an NOC, which was granted in December 2023, after which work started on the site, the petition said. However, after almost 90% of the work was completed and the mobile tower was almost ready, the company said it received a stop-work notice from the village panchayat. Some residents had raised objections to the mobile tower mainly on health grounds, claiming that the radiation emitted from it would be a health hazard, the petition said. Complaints were also filed with the revenue authorities, prompting the village panchayat to cancel the NOC and ask the company to stop the work. The company then approached the high court, challenging the resolution and subsequent stop-work order. The court on Friday allowed the petition, stating that there was no acceptable, much less lawful, reason to pass the resolution except for citing the residents' complaints, which made "some unsubstantiated apprehensions" about the dangers of radiation from the mobile tower. The panchayat also did not grant Indus Tower an opportunity to present its case, the court noted. The bench then struck down the resolution, stating that it was "against all settled norms of reasonableness and non-arbitrariness". It directed the village panchayat to allow the company to complete the work and operate the tower....