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Lucknow: Uttar Pradesh chief minister Mayawati’s ambitious Rs 40,000-crore Ganga Expressway project suffered, yet another setback with the Allahabad High Court ordering the state government to halt all construction work on the 1,047-km long highway, which will connect Ballia on the eastern fringes of the state to the national capital at Greater Noida.
The division bench of Justice D P Singh also served contempt notice to chief secretary Atul Kumar Gupta, chief executive officer of Ganga Expressway Authority Ravindra Singh, JP Infrastructure chairman Manoj Gaur and district magistrate and additional SP of Mirzapur. The bench was hearing a contempt petition of Ganga Mahasabha and Swami Narendra Giri. Contending that work on the expressway was continuing despite the court’s May 29 order restraining it from proceeding on the project and instead directing it to obtain prior environmental clearance, the Bench ordered all work to be stopped forthwith.
It also ordered the chief secretary, the CMD of Jaypee group, which had bagged the bid to build the project, and the district magistrate and SP of Mirzapur to appear before the court on December 2. The Bench asked MC Chaturvedi, chief standing counsel of the state, to serve notices and obtain their replies before the next date of hearing — December 2.
Arun Kumar Gupta, the counsel of the petitioners, said, in its earlier decision on May 29, the court had barred the government from proceeding on the project. The division bench had said “the government must not proceed with the highway project unless and until it obtains a due clearance from the state-level Environment Impact Assessment Authority (SEIAA)” in accordance with law. The court quashed a clearance certificate of the SEIAA dated August 23, 2007, produced by the government, saying the same had not been obtained “in accordance with law”.
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