Walkways, trees & tracks: Pvt firm to ready river revamp plan in 6 months

Ghaziabad: A private firm has been assigned the task of preparing a detailed project report on the Hindon river rejuvenation plan. Tata Projects Limited will draw up a blueprint on how the riverside would be beautified with the construction of walkways, cycle tracks, tree avenues and promenades, among others.
The firm will also prepare a comprehensive water pollution abatement plan by intercepting all drains. Moreover, it will also look into water channel profiling, course correction and strengthening of the river bank for the particular stretch to enhance the flood-carrying capacity of the river.
The firm has been given six months to prepare the DPR and submit it to the government, which will decide on the funding pattern. Officials said as the government is also involved in the project, it is being expected that it would bear a major share of the funds itself.
The district administration had come up with the Hindon rejuvenation plan just before the Chhath festival in October last year and decided to revive the waterbody as well as remove encroachments through a year-long plan.
District magistrate Ajay Shankar Pandey had then requested the urban development department to give permission for a detailed action plan and also allocate funds for the project. The urban development department has now selected Tata Projects for this purpose.
The additional district magistrate (administration), Jitendra Kumar Sharma, has been deputed as the nodal officer for preparing the DPR. He would help the firm in getting the information required for the master development plan, vacate government land parcels in the buffer zone of 1 km of the river stretch, besides facilitating other details.
The project will jointly be implemented by the irrigation department of the Ghaziabad Development Authority and the municipal corporation.
Pandey said all departments would have a specific role to play and they have been already been given directions in this regard during a review meeting recently.
The distric administration has also formed a Hindon sanitation committee, comprising members of the civil society that will monitor the activities being carried out for the river’s redevelopment and give an “unbiased” feedback to the administration. Moreover, a civil sanitation force, having boats and sanitation workers at its disposal, has also been set up to undertake regular cleaning of the river.