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Sarin Memorial Foundation moves HC against Tribune flyover
The NGO cited the Chandigarh Master Plan 2031 observation that the construction of overbridges/flyovers would interfere with the architectural heritage as they impact the visual city’s visual scape and inconvenience pedestrians
The Sarin Memorial Legal Aid Foundation, a non-governmental organisation (NGO), has moved the Punjab and Haryana high court opposing the UT administration’s move to construct Tribune flyover
The NGO cited the Chandigarh Master Plan 2031 observation that the construction of overbridges/flyovers would interfere with the architectural heritage as they impact the visual city’s visual scape and inconvenience pedestrians.
The flyover would only shift the traffic blockade to the following roundabout and would not eliminate the same, the NGO argued. It further suggests that the entry of vehicles from Punjab and Haryana be regulated. The application was listed for hearing on Monday but could not be taken up and now hearing was deferred.
The NGO’s secretary general and senior advocate ML Sarin has sought that the Sarin Memorial be made an intervener in the ongoing proceedings on the flyover issue.
The 1.6-km flyover is to be constructed from the GMCH-32 roundabout all the way up to the railway overbridge near Hallomajra on Dakshin Marg, passing over Tribune Chowk. The ₹184 crore project was pitched as a solution to the traffic chaos witnessed at the busy intersection.
The then UT administrator VP Singh Badnore had in March 2019 laid the project’s foundation stone, but it was stalled as the high court, in November 2019, acting on the plea of another NGO, The Run Club, stayed the uprooting and cutting of trees to be carried out for the project and asked the UT to explore other viable options to resolve the traffic chaos.
Thereafter, in December 2020, then adviser, Manoj Parida had said that UT would go ahead with the project and in place of 2700, now only 700 trees would be axed. No major decision has been taken since then on the issue.
