The permission to the National Highways Authority of India (NHAI) to build a bridge and its approach roads across the river for the Delhi-Meerut Expressway should be allowed to help ease traffic congestion, an expert committee on Tuesday told the National Green Tribunal.
The Principal Committee, headed by Secretary of Ministry of Water Resources, told a bench headed by NGT Chairperson Justice Swatanter Kumar that the “project may be allowed” subject to fulfilling of certain conditions including increasing the cost of monitoring during construction phase of bridge by nearly Rs2.5 crore.
The submissions came in response to the NHAI’s plea seeking NGT’s nod for building of bridges and approach roads over Yamuna.
In its plea, the NHAI had said currently the route between Delhi and Meerut (NH-58) had frequent jams causing lot of inconvenience to traffic between the two cities and the project will reduce the time of travel to 40-45 minutes from three hours at present.
The committee, constituted by the NGT for implementation of ‘Maili se Nirmal Yamuna Revitalisation Project 2017’, has recommended that project proponent should save “as many trees” as possible and no wetland area on the floodplains should be disturbed during the construction phase.
The Principal Committee also comprises Special Secretary of MoEF, Joint Secretary of Ministry of Water Resources, Delhi Chief Secretary, DDA, Delhi Jal Board, municipal corporations, Commissioner and thers. The matter is listed for next hearing on November 22.