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Clearance to Games Village site illegal: Yamuna Jiye Abhiyan

Mandira Nayar

NEW DELHI: The Delhi Development Authority may have a lot of explaining to do about the site it chose for the 2010 Commonwealth Games Village. Yamuna Jiye Abhiyaan (YJA), a group of concerned citizens and non-government organisations, has alleged that the DDA has gone ahead with the plans to build the Games Village on the riverbed overriding serious concerns expressed by the Expert Appraisal Committee of the Union Ministry of Environment and Forests (MoEF) that studied the proposal in 2006. It has substantiated these allegations through the documents it got through Right to Information applications.

“The MoEF has been cajoled, tricked and browbeaten into diluting the conditions of environment clearance. Since the due process of law has been short circuited on extraneous considerations like lack of time and ‘false’ national interest, the clearance as it exists is illegal and liable to be quashed as being unfair, unbiased and contrary to the requirements of public safety and interest,” charged YJA convenor Manoj Kumar Misra. When the Expert Appraisal Committee made a site visit in November 2006, it raised a number of environmental issues that the DDA has still not resolved, claimed Mr. Misra.

“The Committee had concerns about the location of the project in the river floodplain, the creation of efflux in the river during high floods, the interference with recharge of ground water, the adverse effect of filling flyash over the project site as well as the high traffic density indicated by the project,” charged Mr. Misra.

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