The NGT today directed the governments of Haryana, Delhi and Uttar Pradesh to clear all concrete illegal structures from the notified no-development zones on the Yamuna river floodplains. Chetan Chauhan reports.
The National Green Tribunal (NGT) on Monday directed the governments of Haryana, Delhi and Uttar Pradesh to clear all concrete illegal structures from the notified no-development zones on the Yamuna river floodplains, including the Hindon river.
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If the latest NGT directives are implemented, Vrindavan walk, high-rise buildings in Noida and Greater Noida and homes in Agra may be razed to the ground.
Different municipal bodies have different definition of the no-development zones. It is 500 metres from the riverbed in Agra, 200 metres from highest floodplain in Varanasi and 100 metres from the riverbed in Delhi.
The NGT, while hearing a petition by Akash Vashishtha, had asked the state governments to implement their own definition of the no-development zones. Different government agencies across states admitted that concrete structures have come up on the river floodplains.Unabated rapid urbanisation close to the river has resulted in shrinking of the riverbed.
Around 4,000 acres of Yamuna floodplain had been encroached along 30 km of the river in Noida. The religious cities of Mathura and Vrindavan have also built concrete structures on the riverbed. Agra is said to have about 21 colonies within the no-development zone.
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The tribunal bench headed by Justice Swatanter Kumar directed the state government officials to ensure that all unauthorised constructions are removed and a compliance report is filed within four weeks.
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The tribunal bench headed by Justice Swatanter Kumar directed the state government officials to ensure that all unauthorised constructions are removed and a compliance report is filed within four weeks.
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The tribunal also directed officials to immediately stop any ongoing construction or development work. It asked the state governments to submit a 25-year plan on rejuvenating the Yamuna.
Chetan Chauhan is the National Affairs Editor looking into all aspects of news and features from across India. A Chevening scholar with over three decades of experience in reporting and news management, Chetan has extensively covered all important aspects of the social sector, political economy, environment and climate change nationally and internationally. He did a journalism course at the Reuters Institute of Journalism in Oxford and Digital Media training at Nanyang Technological University in Singapore. He started as a reporter with The Statesman in 1996 and joined the Hindustan Times in 2000 in the metro bureau covering environment, crime and Delhi politics. He covered hot local news, from the Jessica Lal murder case to the rebellion of Delhi Congress MLAs against then Chief Minister Sheila Dikshit, to the replacement of toxic vehicle fuel with cleaner compressed natural gas (CNG) in the national capital. Some of his stories on air pollution became part of the Supreme Court’s landmark MC Mehta versus Government of India case in the National Capital Region (NCR), forcing the government to take corrective measures. As part of the national political bureau since 2004, he covered important central sectors such as environment, education, social justice, labour, rural development, water resources, renewable energy, agriculture, broadcasting and the Planning Commission for more than a decade producing several exclusive and investigative breaking stories. His specialisation is the environment, having covered at least a dozen United Nations global conferences on climate change, biodiversity and wildlife including climate summits in Paris, Copenhagen and Bali. He also covered India’s two five-year plans ---11th and 12th and reported on drafting and execution of right based laws such as Right to Education, Right to Information and rural job guarantee law, MG-NREGA, now being introduced in new format as VG-RAM-G Act. He has in-depth knowledge of social sector issues. He was one of the first to report on tigers vanishing from Sariska and Panna wildlife reserves in 2004 and 2008, respectively, leading to the setting up of the National Tiger Conservation Authority (NTCA) and the introduction of stringent penal provisions for poaching. He has written extensively on the rising human-animal conflict in India and the degradation of India’s biodiversity hotspots because of mining and other activities. Since 2004, Chetan has covered Parliament comprehensively and participated in training on the nuanced coverage of Parliament proceedings. He has travelled extensively across India to cover national and provincial elections since 1998, especially in the Hindi heartland states, considered India’s road to power. He writes a regular column for Hindustan Times, Ecostani, on important national politics, economy, Himalayan ecology and environmental issues. His other responsibilities include providing inputs for edits and edit page articles for the publication, apart from managing news flow from across India.
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