NGT notice to MoEF on construction of Agra-Lucknow Expressway

A plea challenging the forest clearance granted to the project to construct the 302 km Agra -Lucknow Expressway today led the National Green Tribunal to seek a response from the Environment Ministry.
A bench headed by NGT Chairperson Justice Swatanter Kumar issued notices to the Ministry of Environment & Forests, Uttar Pradesh government, UP Expressways Industrial Development Authority (UPEIDA) and others while seeking their reply by April 8.
The directions came after NGT heard a plea by Lucknow native Nikhilesh Singh against illegal felling of trees and construction activity in the forest area which forms part of the six-lane expressway being built by UPEIDA.

The plea, filed through advocate Neelam Rathore, alleged that the Stage I in-principle approval has been recommended by Regional Empowered Committee (REC) despite recording violation of the Forest (Conservation) Act, 1980 and specifically noting irregularities mentioned in the site inspection report.
Singh has contended that salient features of the project as incorporated in the environmental clearance stated that "only around 98.9 hectares of forest land was to be involved and about 27,582 trees were located on the Principal Right of Way (PRoW).
"However, in its application for seeking the necessary in principal approval in terms of the Section 2 of the Forest Conservation Act, 1980, UPEIDA mentioned the total length of the expressway proposed being 302.222 kilometers comprising of 3429.1814 hectare of non-forest and 12,38,253 hectare of forest land involving felling of 65,342 number of trees.

"The estimated cost of the project was 11,526 crores. The reserved and protected forest lands proposed for the diversion are 109.27 hectares and 14.5543 hectares respectively.

In its plea, NHAI had said that 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.
NHAI had moved NGT in view of a 2015 order saying that construction of "new barrages and roads, railway and metro bridges and embankments and bunds" should not be permitted.

However, in exceptional cases, "a critical impact of their potential impact on flood aggravation and environmental clearances should be made mandatory", it had said.
The Delhi-Meerut Expressway will be built through public- private-partnership mode and slated to be operational by March 2018. The project starts from National Highway-2 at Ring Road in Delhi and ends at Meerut in Uttar Pradesh.