New boundary wall to be made around Delhi Ridge

The new design will have barbed wires on top and small passages at its base to allow reptiles and other animals to move freely

The forest and wildlife department finalised plans to redesign the Delhi Ridge’s boundary wall last week after discovering breaches that have allowed intruders to enter and dump waste in the Capital’s ridge areas, officials familiar with the matter said on Monday, adding that the plans were begun in December of last year, and a tender will soon be issued to start the work in stages.

A view of a collapsed boundary wall of the Ridge at Karol Bagh in New Delhi on Monday. (Raj K Raj/HT PHOTO)

“The wall is broken in several places, allowing intruders to enter and exit the ridge through these openings. Moreover, in some cases, waste is dumped in the ridge, so the new design aims to not only allow wildlife to pass freely, but it will significantly strengthen the existing walls,” said a forest official aware of the plans, adding that the Ridge was first handed over to the forest department in 1994, with significant forest pockets acquired since then. The wall, which is a contiguous wall with a height of three metres, currently has no provisions to allow animals to pass through.

The new design will have barbed wires on top and small passages at its base to allow reptiles and other animals to move freely, and the wall will be marked with a “logo” saying “department of forest and wildlife”, said the official.

According to a second forest official, it was decided to distinguish this wall from other stone walls by marking it with the logo because department officials frequently encountered confusion in parts of the southern ridge, where farmhouses also have similar walls.

“It would then be difficult to determine whether the area behind the wall is private or public land. The forest department logo will help it stand out, and the new design will be consistent throughout the Capital,” the official added.

The plan also aims to bring newly acquired forest land or land cleared of encroachments under boundary protection; non-ridge areas such as city forests and the Yamuna floodplains will instead use wire mesh fencing rather than stone walls.

“A lot of these areas are still not properly protected, so this new wall design will take into account all of these locations as well as the land that has recently been cleared of encroachments,” said the first official quoted above.

According to a notice issued by the department on May 15, the existing design had become obsolete.

“Because the design of the boundary wall is now obsolete, the competent authority has approved the new design for the boundary walls, where RCC pillars are embossed with the Department of Forest and Wildlife (DOFW) logo, interspersed with coarse rubble masonry, along with small passages at the bottom for unaffected movement of reptiles and other wild animals,” the notice states, adding that no rubble masonry will be used in non-Ridge areas.

“In non-Ridge areas, RCC (reinforced cement concrete) pillars with a 3-metre height will be used, and the pillar-to-pillar distance with wire mesh will be around three metres. On the slanted portion of the pillars, barbed wire can also be used,” it said.

Officials said that the cost estimate as well as the time-frame for completion will be finalised after the tender is issued.

The ridge in Delhi is an extension of the Aravallis, and it is divided into four distinct zones. The nearly 7,800-hectare ridge is made up of the northern ridge (87 hectares), the central ridge (864 hectares), the south central ridge (626 hectares), and the southern ridge (6,200 hectares).

In the last two years, there have been numerous complaints about waste being dumped in various parts of the ridge, most notably in the central ridge. A group of more than 50 resdents, as part of a citizen-led initiative called There is No Earth B, has also been conducting drives to collect non-biodegradable waste from the central ridge, with the most recent such drive taking place on May 7, when they collected approximately 158 kg of waste from the central ridge, towards Karol Bagh.

Despite filing a complaint with the Central Pollution Control Board in April 2022, highlighting waste being burned and dumped in the open, Bhawna Tanwar, 23, a campaigner from There Is No Earth B, said no remedial action had been taken, with several portions of the wall still broken.

“Until the wall is repaired, people will continue to dump waste there,” she said.