Ghaziabad (Uttar Pradesh): Around 33,000 fully grown trees are proposed to be felled to make way for the Ghaziabad-Meerut-Muzaffarnagar Kanwar pilgrimage route, the Uttar Pradesh government has informed the National Green Tribunal.
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The NGT panel, chaired by Prakash Srivastava along with Arun Kumar Tyagi and expert member A Senthil Vel, has requested more details from the government by the next hearing on July 8.
According to several news reports, the Union Ministry of Environment, Forest, and Climate Change permitted the state government to cut 110,000 trees and plants for the project in these districts.
The government explained to the NGT that the Kanwar route is for about 10 million devotees returning to various cities and villages in UP, Haryana, Rajasthan, Delhi, and MP after collecting water from the Ganga in Haridwar.
This route is classified as very crowded for both common people and devotees. A total of 54 villages in Muzaffarnagar, Meerut, and Ghaziabad lie along this route, causing significant traffic disruption during the month of Shravan, an unidentified government official was quoted as saying in The Times of India.
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 governments expenditure and finance committee gave 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.
The environmental court has sought more details about the project from the state public works department, the forest department, the Union environment ministry, and the district magistrates of Muzaffarnagar, Meerut, and Ghaziabad.
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