Ghaziabad: The Uttar Pradesh government informed the National Green Tribunal (NGT) that over 33,000 fully grown trees have to be cut down for the 111-kilometer Kanwar route project, which will connect Ghaziabad, Meerut, and Muzaffarnagar.
The panel of NGT chairperson Prakash Srivastava, Arun Kumar Tyagi and expert member A Senthil Vel sought more details from the govt by the next date of hearing on July 8.
The state government is permitted to remove 1.1 lakh trees and plants for the project in the three districts by the Union Ministry of Environment, Forests, and Climate Change. Taking suo motu cognizance of the order, the tribunal asked the ministry, the public works department, the main conservator of forests, and the district managers of the three districts for information on the trees that were going to be chopped down. The government provided the information, but the tribunal demanded a more comprehensive split.
The govt has told the NGT that it wanted to construct the kanwar route for around 1 crore devotees who return to various cities and villages of UP, Haryana, Rajasthan, Delhi and MP after fetching water from the Ganga in Haridwar.
“This route is included in the ‘very crowded’ category for common people and devotees. A total of 54 villages in three districts of Muzaffarnagar, Meerut and Ghaziabad fall on this route.
govt has told the NGT that it wanted to construct the kanwar route for around 1 crore devotees who return to various cities and villages of UP, Haryana, Rajasthan, Delhi and MP after fetching water from the Ganga in Haridwar.
There is a lot of disruption to traffic movement during the month of Shravan,” it had told the tribunal.
The green court, however, had raised “substantial issues relating to compliance of environmental norms” in an earlier order.
The state govt has identified 222 hectares for afforestation in Lalitpur district. We have also deposited Rs 1.5 crore to the Compensatory Afforestation Fund Management and Planning Authority (CAMPA). We will apprise the court about the rules we have followed,” a PWD official said.
The Kanwar route was proposed in 2018 as an alternative to the usual road through western UP and Uttarakhand districts along the Upper Ganga canal.
In 2020, the govt’s expenditure and finance committee had given its approval to the project.
The stretch will have 10 major bridges, 27 minor ones and one railway overbridge. The bridges on the Ganga canal were mostly constructed around 1850.
