Former civil servants write to PM Modi opposing Central Vista project as it will destroy heritage

Mukesh Ranjan
Tribune News Service
New Delhi, May 17

A group of retired civil servants has written an open letter addressed to Prime Minister Narendra Modi opposing the government’s plan relating to the redevelopment of Central Vista and said it will destroy the heritage of the city.

In the letter addressed to both Prime Minister Modi and Urban Development Minister Hardeep Singh Puri, the retired civil servants, including IAS and IPS officers, said, “Construction and redesign on the scale planned in the redevelopment project will significantly affect the heritage nature of this precinct, and destroy it irrevocably.”

The signatories of the letter include former secretaries, Environment Ministry, Meena Gupta and Tishyarakshit Chatterjee, and Narendra Sisodia (former secretary, finance), senior IPS officer Julio Ribeiro, former ambassadors Aftab Seth and Ashok Kumar Sharma, a former Income Tax commissioner A Selvaraj and others.

“The redevelopment planned will, moreover cause severe environmental damage,” the letter read, while adding: “This precinct is at the core of the congested capital of Delhi, and acts as the lungs of the city, with its dense mature tree canopies serving as a repository of bio diversity and the vast lawns of the Vista as a watershed for the city between the Ridge and the Yamuna.”

It said, “Constructing a large number of multi-storied office buildings, with basements, in this open area will create congestion and irreversibly change and damage the environment.”

The letter says Delhi already suffers from “enormous environmental pollution” and “to plan something which will increase this pollution many, many times, not merely during the construction phase but also subsequently, is clearly a thoughtless and irresponsible act.”

The government has proposed a Rs 20,000-crore project to redevelop the iconic Central Vista, and build a triangular Parliament building next to the existing one, common Central Secretariat, revamp the 3-km Rajpath.