“Govt. non-committal on water release from Hathini Kund barrage”

Even as thousands of “Yamuna Muktikaran Padyatra” activists, including women and children, crossed over into Delhi on Monday after a prolonged stay in neighbouring Faridabad over the weekend, they put the proposed demonstration at Jantar Mantar on hold in view of negotiations with the Central Government through the day to find a mutually-agreed solution to the problem of growing pollution in the river. Another round of meeting between Union Minister of Water Resources Harish Rawat and a delegation of the “Yamuna Muktikaran Yatra” was underway till late in the evening.

Residents of five villages in Gurgaon whose land was acquired seven years ago by the Haryana Government for setting up of a Special Economic Zone (SEZ) by Reliance India Limited (RIL) have been on “dharna” at Garoli Khurd village for over a month demanding that their land be returned as the project has been shelved. Over 2,000 families are learnt to have been affected by the land acquisition.

“The Haryana Government had acquired over 1,300 acre land belonging to five villages- Garoli Khurd, Harsaru, Mohammadpur, Khandra and Narsinghpur- in 2006 for setting up industry and handed it over to Reliance for setting up of SEZ. But now that the SEZ project has been shelved, we want our land back.

Phase-I of the Rapid MetroRail Gurgaon Limited (RMGL), a network of 5.1 km connecting Cyber City, National Highway-8 and Sikanderpur Metro station, is expected to become operational in April despite slowdown of work due to extreme cold, said RMGL managing director Sanjiv Rai here on Thursday.

“Due to extreme cold conditions prevailing over the past few weeks, the de-stressing and welding of metro tracks have been delayed for a couple of weeks and work on a one-kilometre stretch is still pending. We also faced labour problems due to cold condition.

The power distribution companies in Haryana have come up with an offer to increase power supply to villages to 20 hours a day, bringing it at part with urban areas, provided they co-operate to reduce the Aggregate Technical and Commercial Losses (AT&C) on their feeders to 25 per cent or below.

Currently, the villages get power for 11 to 14 hours a day.

Though average AT&C loss in urban and rural areas is about 35 per cent, the loss is as high as 60 per cent and above in some of the villages.

The extremely low forest cover in the Draft Development Plan-2031 for Gurgaon-Manesar Urban Complex has come under severe criticism from environmentalists and civil society groups which have demanded that the plan be brought in compliance with the forest provisions as per the national and State policies.

“The forest cover in Haryana is just 3.64 per cent which is among the lowest in the country and much lower than the national average of 22-23 per cent. The Regional Plan 2021, prepared by the National Capital Region Planning Board, and subsequent court judgments have stated that it is imperative to bring in more areas under forest so as to maintain the ecological balance and proposed that the total forest cover be 10 per cent. But the ocular estimation shows that the DDP-2031 for Gurgaon-Manesar Urban Complex has less than 4 per cent forest cover,” said environmentalist Chetan Agarwal.

Submitting an application before the Punjab and Haryana High Court in a case pertaining to the depletion of groundwater in Gurgaon, Qutab Enclave residents’ welfare association former president R.S

Conceding that there is a huge gap in demand and supply of water in Gurgaon, the Haryana Government recently submitted before the Punjab and Haryana High Court that water supply in the city is short by 22 Million Gallons per Day (MGD).

In an affidavit in the Court on the requirement of water in Gurgaon, Town and Country Planning Department Principal Secretary S.S. Dhillon has admitted that there were about 133,900 sanctioned water connections in the entire city of Gurgaon, including 29,942 connections in the Old Town.

The district administration has now made it mandatory for houses with more than 100 square metres covered area to have a rainwater harvesting system in place. Twenty teams have been constituted to grant permission to install the systems and ensure their functioning.

The orders come in the wake of a recent Punjab and Haryana High Court directions barring Haryana Urban Development Authority (HUDA) from issuing fresh licences for housing projects without an undertaking from the builders not to draw ground water.

The recent Punjab & Haryana High Court direction barring the Haryana Urban Development Authority (HUDA) from issuing fresh licences for housing projects in Gurgaon without an undertaking from t