New Delhi: The National Highways Authority of India (NHAI) has urged the Supreme Court to allow the cutting of over 800 trees in the Taj Trapezium Zone (TTZ) for the development of a six-lane, access-controlled highway between Agra and Gwalior.
The Supreme Court, which has supervised industrial work around the Taj Mahal since 1996, designated 10,400 square kilometres of land around the protected monument as TTZ.
Moving two applications before a special Supreme Court bench, which monitors development activity in the TTZ area, the highways development agency, working under the road and transport ministry, said that the proposed highway would improve connectivity between Gwalior and Agra via Dholpur and Morena.
The NHAI said the greenfield highway would improve road safety along the existing link between Agra and Gwalior — National Highway-44 (NH-44) — while helping to save travel time, fuel and transportation costs.
Moreover, the NHAI submitted that the central government and the Union Ministry of Environment of Forest (MoEF) approved the proposed highway after being presented with detailed Environment Impact Assessment reports.
The submission promised that the NHAI would follow the conditions imposed by the ministry to minimise the ancillary effects of construction to preserve the environment and fulfil the endeavours directed towards sustainable development.
A bench led by Justice Abhay S. Oka heard the NHAI on Monday and asked the court-appointed Central Empowered Committee (CEC) to examine the highway proposal.
A high-powered body, the CEC, has been helping the court out in environment-related cases involving projects within forest areas. One of the cases in this batch is related to proposed development work around the world heritage site Taj Mahal.
According to the documents in the NHAI’s application, the proposed highway will start from village Deori in Agra and end near Susera village in Gwalior. It traverses four districts in three states — Agra in Uttar Pradesh, Dholpur in Rajasthan, and Morena and Gwalior in Madhya Pradesh.
The project would incur an estimated cost of more than Rs 2,497 crore.
The highway would require more than 504 hectares of private, agricultural and forest land, including the diversion of 2.82 hectares of reserved forest area in the National Chambal Sanctuary in the Morena district.
The 88.5-kilometre-long proposed highway will feature eight major and six minor bridges, six flyovers, one road-over bridge above a railway line, several underpasses, and box crossings.
More than 19 km of the highway will fall in the TTZ area.
The NHAI finalised the proposed alignment after it found it the most feasible and beneficial compared to alternative routes.
Expansion of the current NH-44 from a four-lane to either a six- or eight-lane highway was also explored. However, the idea got shelved as it would have led to much dismantling and rehabilitation in the existing built-up areas and urban centres. The environmental impact was also significantly higher, and the relative land acquisition cost was higher.
“The new green field six-lane corridor connecting Agra to Gwalior was accordingly conceptualised and proposed with the objective of decongesting the existing Agra-Gwalior section of NH-44 and, once developed, will lead to better inter-state connectivity thus, helping in better freight volume and movement pattern on the highway,” the application submitted.
The application highlighted the benefits of the corridor, saying the fast, smooth movement of traffic on it would bring down accident rates and vehicular pollution levels, boosting local agriculture and enabling farmers to realise better value for their produce.
(Edited by Madhurita Goswami)