The civic and development bodies of Ghaziabad seem obsessed with concretising the green areas of the city. Ignoring the strictures passed by the National Green Tribunal (NGT), the Ghaziabad Municipal Corporation is fast concretising the green areas in both residential and commercial parts of the city.
The NGT had, on September 25, asked the Ministry of Environment and Forests (MoEF) to make its position clear on whether concretisation work comes under the purview of Area Development Projects under Category 8 (B) of the Environment Impact Assessment Notification 2006, requiring prior Environment Clearance. The order was passed by the Tribunal after the petitioner submitted that concretisation work was critically endangering the urban environment and that such concretisation was being done by the civic body.
With unabated concretisation carried out in the city for the last four years, the Municipal Corporation has almost virtually concretised the whole of Raj Nagar, which was once an extensively vegetated and green area. The vegetation outside the residential plots were uprooted to lay down cemented and interlocking tiles, something which has also been raised in the petition.
“I have been constantly calling up the Municipal Commissioner and Principal Secretary and have even informed the Chief Minister’s office, but no one is responding. It seems they are all united in this deliberate damage to environment,” said Akash Vashishtha, an environment conservationist and petitioner of the case.
“The old tender work, which had been awarded in the past, are being executed. No new tenders in this regard are being considered for concretisation. The area that was dug as part of expansion work is being filled up by river sand and then tiles will be laid. It is being done in view of increasing traffic volume. The narrow roads are unable to bear such heavy load of traffic,” said Praveen Chaudhary, councillor of Ward 53.
The Municipal Commissioner, RK Singh, also spoke on similar lines. He said, “We are looking into it. The officers have been asked not to violate the green panel’s instructions.”