The standing committee of the national board for wildlife found that the project had the potential to change ‘morphology and hydrodynamics’ of Ganga and will kill about 7km of the river in UP.
An environment ministry panel has rejected the Uttar Pradesh government’s proposal to develop the country’s first “religious hi-tech smart city” in Garh Mukteshwar, saying the project would “kill the cleanest part” of the Ganga and further endanger the dolphins inhabiting the national river.
The UP government had proposed a new city spread over 7,395 hectares inside Hastinapur wildlife sanctuary and on both banks of river Ganga with an aim to inculcate a unique mix of technology and religion. (HT File Photo)
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Countries such as Malaysia had shown interest in the project in which the river was to be diverted to construct a barrage and a canal encircling the new city. Malaysia’s Construction Industry Development Board (CIDB) wanted to invest US$30 million at four places in India, including Garh Mukteshwar.
The UP government had proposed a new city spread over 7,395 hectares inside Hastinapur wildlife sanctuary and on both banks of river Ganga with an aim to inculcate a unique mix of technology and religion. The city was to be developed in a public-private-partnership model having high-end residential and commercial establishments.
But the standing committee of the national board for wildlife, which reviews projects coming up in and around national parks and sanctuaries, rejected the proposal after a team led by the ministry’s inspector general of forests inspected the site.
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It found that the project had the potential to change “morphology and hydrodynamics” of the Ganga and will kill approximately 7km of the river in UP.
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It found that the project had the potential to change “morphology and hydrodynamics” of the Ganga and will kill approximately 7km of the river in UP.
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“This (the project) will hinder the efforts towards the restoration of the Ganga river and will negatively affect the success of making a clean and vibrant Ganga which is one of the (central government’s) main agenda,” the team said in its reported submitted to the ministry of environment, forest and climate change last month.
On the proposed barrage to divert 6,000 cusec of water from the river to have a man-made river front, the inspection report said it will “disrupt the downstream ecological process” of Ganga and will be in violation of the National Green Tribunal’s July 2017 order which prohibited construction along the river. It also said the proposed 8.5km canal from the barrage will affect integrity of the wildlife habitat as it will hinder movement of wild animals.
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The report said Ganga at Garh Mukteshwar was cleanest in Uttar Pradesh and held a significant population of river dolphins, critically endangered gharial and turtle species.
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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