Riverfront project flows into neglect

LUCKNOW: With Lucknow Development Authority yet to take over the responsibility of the Gomti’s beautification, the Gomti riverfront project lies in neglect.

This, when more than Rs 1,400 crore has been spent on the beautification of the riverfront. A part of it was opened for public in 2016, but the rest of the project still remains incomplete.

The river has become dirtier, with thick forth and hyacinth covering it. A big plan was to prevent direct flow of the sewage into the Gomti through intercepting drains on both sides of the river, but even that has remained a nonstarter as many untapped drains still pollute the river.

The plants on banks have died due to poor irrigation facility. A reality check done by TOI revealed that crores of rupees on maintaining the riverfront have gone waste with tiles and stones falling off at many places. Around Rs 40 crore were spent on buying various types of fountains to ornate the river. Now, they lie defunct. Some have even got damaged.

Due to lack of security at the spot, cables and parts of fountains below the Lohia Bridge have been stolen. Even the musical fountains near rubber dam are in a bad state, with tiles chipping off at many places. The lights are defunct and garbage lies dumped at several places. In 2016, a 1.5km long stretch of the Gomti Riverfront was opened for public near the Marine Drive. The stretch had fancy lights, river flow was clean and had seating and drinking water facilities for the visitors.

But even this stretch now shows signs of poor upkeep with defunct lights, overgrown grasses, broken stones, illegal parking, encroachment and littering of food waste around the banks.

Times View

Gomti is Lucknow's lifeline. Maintaining quality of water in the river is as important as beautifying its banks. Even after spending Rs 1400 crores, neither the beautification is complete, nor the quality of water has improved. In fact, pollution level has gone up in the past two years. Now, with LDA taking over the project, we can hope that the Gomti's past glory would be restored. But for that, the agency will have to work on war footing and with utmost seriousness. State government also needs to support LDA in the endevour and at the same time punish those responsible for the scam.