‘Akshardham, Games village should not have got green nod’

‘Akshardham, Games village should not have got green nod’

New Delhi: Union environment minister Jairam Ramesh set the cat among pigeons opened on Friday when he said the Akshardham Temple, a project dear to BJP leader L K Advani, and the Commonwealth Games Village should not have been given environmental clearance as they have come up on the Yamuna river bed.
   This, however, doesn’t mean that he wants these sprawling structures to be torn down, he hastened to add. But Ramesh has implied that previous regimes have been lax towards environment standards. And this, in turn, could get some hackles up. “If your question is whether the Commonwealth Games village got environmental clearance, the answer is yes, it did. Should it have got environmental clearance, I don’t think it should have got environmental clearance,” he said during a news conference called to announce the new CRZ norms.
   Ramesh drew attention to the fact that the Akshardham temple was built during the NDA regime and had not even sought the mandatory green clearance from the ministry. At the time this happened, many environmental activists had criticised the NDA government.
   And when the UPA government came to power, it cleared the construction of the Commonwealth Games village on the river bed, ironically, citing the temple as precedence. This was challenged in court and the Supreme Court, too, cleared the village project.
   Ramesh said: “We can’t demolish the Commonwealth Games village, we can’t demolish the Akshardham complex. We have to protect the remaining river bed.” He added that he was considering a River Regulation Zone notification along the lines of Coastal Regulation Zone. “The manner in which Yamuna river belt has been devastated by construction should be a wake up call to all of us,” he said.

No large-scale damage to Lavasa forest, says MoEF panel: 

The 10-member committee, constituted by the ministry of environent and forests (MoEF) to assess the environment impact of the Lavasa project, has indicated that there was no large-scale destruction to the forest cover at the project site.
   The committee also did not find any specific evidence to conclude that the project will affect the supply of water from the Varasagaon dam to Pune city.
   The committee, which had a mandate from the Bombay high court to check allegations of environmental violations at the project, concluded its three-day visit to Lavasa on Friday.
   Speaking to media persons on Friday, committee chairman Naresh Dayal said, “Some minor damage could be there. However, prima facie, the committee has not witnessed any largescale destruction of forests.”
   He said the committee was yet to finalise its report, which will be submitted to the MoEF.
   Dayal said, “We mainly examined concerns with environmental issues, water treatment plants, sewage treatment plants, hospitals and the master plan of the project.”