Maya’s Noida park

The life-size statues of Uttar Pradesh Chief Minister Mayawati and other Dalit icons will dot the skyline of Noida after the Supreme Court on Friday granted conditional clearance to `685 crore project which had run into environmental hurdles.

Holding the State Government at fault for brazenly chopping off 6186 trees to make way for the project, the court permitted the construction of project by restricting space for permanent structures (including memorial, statues) and hard landscape not to exceed 25 per cent of the total project area of 33 hectares.

What angered the court most was the State’s disregard to the presence of Okhla Bird Sanctuary a few hundred metres away. Observing that the project may possibly cause serious and irreparable harm to the bird sanctuary, the apex court bench of Chief Justice SH Kapadia, Justices Aftab Alam and KS Radhakrishnan directed the State to plant thick trees in 50 per cent of the project area, more towards the side facing the bird sanctuary. The remaining 25 per cent was to be green soft landscape (grass, shrubs).

The court said, “Any construction work should commence only on completion of the planting of the trees.” It appointed a three-member committee comprising CEO of NOIDA, an ornithologist appointed by the Central Government and a member drawn from court-appointed central empowered committee, to monitor implementation of its order.

On the tricky question whether the project required Environment Impact Assessment (EIA) under a Central Government notification of September 14, 2006, though the bench held that the project was out of the notification ambit, it did suggest that this was the only result possible taking into account how the notification was framed.