New concrete plan may strip Shimla of precious deodar cover

Pratibha Chauhan

Shimla, June 21

Allowing construction in the 17 green belts in the town could open the floodgates for unrestrained concretisation of the green belts, resulting in the town losing its greenery.

The move to throw open construction activity under the Draft Shimla Development Plan (DSDP) on Monday, subject to the final nod from the Supreme Court, could impact precious deodar forests on the green patches.

Despite various studies indicating that the forest cover on the 414 hectares in the 17 belts has remained protected in sharp contrast to the dwindling greenery in other areas, the move to now allow construction in the green belts has disappointed experts.

The Environment Impact Assessment (EIA) of the green belts undertaken by the Department of Environment in December 2013 had recommended ban on all construction activity in the entire town. The very minute examination of the 2002 satellite imagery of the majority of the localities of the town with the situation in 2013 brought out some startling revelations. “Once known as the Queen of Hills, Shimla is fast becoming an urban nightmare because of haphazard construction,” the report said.

Though it was the previous BJP regime which had taken the decision to open up green belts for construction, it is the Congress regime that has chosen to give nod to the same Shimla Development Plan (SDP) without reportedly going into its merits and demerits or getting a fresh study undertaken. “The green belts must kept be sacrosanct as the oxygen given by more than 100-year-old deodar trees cannot be compensated by anything else,” says BS Malhans, writer and environmentalist. He however advocates compensating the people who bought plots in the green areas, prior to the ban in 2000, by way of alternative land elsewhere in the town.

Yogendra Mohan Sengupta, an environmentalist who has been battling in courts against indiscriminate construction in Shimla, feels opening up green belts to construction would prove disastrous as the deodar forests would face damage as is the case in the rest of the town.

A retired State Town Planner, not wanting to be identified, too abhors the idea of allowing constructions in green belts. A comparative study of urban forests within Shimla undertaken by the Council for Science, Environment and Technology in 2017 clearly indicated that 56 hectares of agricultural and open land had been gobbled up by constructions in 15 years. The comparison of the changes in forest cover within Shimla MC in 2002, 2007, 2012 and 2017 clearly indicated consistent increase in the built-up area to 328 hectares in 2002, 356 hectares in 2007, 372 hectares in 2012 and 384 hectares in 2017.