1L+ trees need to be cut, kanwar corridor held up | Noida News
Ghaziabad: With the annual kanwar yatra set to commence next month, the fate of a project pertaining to it hangs in the balance. National Green Tribunal (NGT) is seized with the kanwar road project — which was conceived in 2018 by chief minister Yogi Adityanath — over felling of trees along the stretch.NGT in Feb 2024 took suo motu cognizance of the felling of 1.12 lakh trees along the 111-km route of the project from Muradnagar in Ghaziabad via Sardhana and Jani in Meerut and Purkazi in Muzaffarnagar along Upper Ganga Canal (UGC), which is a forested area.The project was conceived to decongest Delhi-Meerut Expressway (DME) and other expressways, which get taken over by kanwariyas during the annual yatra to Haridwar, leading to traffic jams and accidents. This year, Delhi-Dehradoon and Ganga expressways will remain out of bounds for kanwariyas, but on DME/NH9, the yatra will be allowed. DME is a 96-km-long, 14-lane access-controlled highway linking Sarai Kale Khan in Delhi to Meerut.The project was proposed in 2018 to provide an alternate route to western UP districts and Uttarakhand along the right bank of the UGC to benefit the Kanwar yatris. In 2020, the UP govt’s expenditure and finance committee gave approval to the project, which is to be developed at an estimated cost of Rs 628 crore.Chief engineer Ramraja (PWD, the executing agency of the project) told TOI, “The matter is pending with NGT as we have sought forest clearance from the ministry of environment, forest and climate change on re-alignment of the stretch route, which is awaited. The matter will be heard by NGT on Aug 20 and this time we are hopeful that clearance for the project will be granted, and if that happens, by next year, the stretch will be ready.”Ramraja said a new alignment was proposed under which the route ran alongside the right bank of UGC and a buffer zone of 7m between the canal and the road was to be reduced to 5m. He said the re-alignment did not require cutting as many trees and added, “We had proposed a new alignment according to which the route runs alongside the right bank of UGC and there is a buffer zone of 7m between the canal and the road to be reduced to 5m. The re-alignment will not require cutting of as many trees and we hope that it will get forest clearance shortly,” Ramraja added.Reducing a canal’s buffer zone from 7m to 5m was described as a strategic urban planning adjustment aimed at balancing ecological preservation with critical infrastructure expansion.The rationale behind constructing the route that was placed by the state govt before NGT was: “Every year in the month of Shravan, about 1 crore Shiv devotees coming from Uttar Pradesh, Delhi, Haryana, Rajasthan, Madhya Pradesh etc. return from Haridwar to their respective states. Because of this, this route has been included in the category of very crowded routes for the common people and devotees. A total of 54 villages falls under Muzaffarnagar, Meerut and Ghaziabad districts on the said route, which is also a main route for the movement of residents.”“In such a situation, there is a lot of disruption in the traffic on the Kanwar route directly and indirectly in the months of Shravan. Of the 111-km stretch, 13km falls in Ghaziabad, 42km in Meerut and 56kmin Muzaffarnagar,” the state govt had told NGT.
