Esha Roy
New Delhi : While Union Sports minister M S Gill last week said the Yamuna is so dirty that foreign visitors should be kept away from the river during the Commonwealth Games, plans are afoot to make the riverbed a tourist-friendly zone — keeping in mind environmental issues.
Delhi Lieutenant-Governor Tejendra Khanna said there are plans to make concentric layers or sub-zones on the riverbed. He said, “The peripheral layer will allow recreational activities for visitors, like picnics.”
Khanna heads the Delhi Development Authority (DDA), which plans land-use of the area.
Maintaining too much construction on the riverbed will not be entertained, Khanna told Newsline that DDA already has a plan in place by which this can be done.
Khanna chaired a high-level meeting last week in which feasibility and implementation of the plan had been discussed. “There will be three layers on the riverbed,” he said. “At the heart of the riverbed, alongside Yamuna, will be a biodiversity zone. There will be no construction here, and visitors will not be allowed to enter. The next layer will be the ‘interactive zone’ — while heavily forested, people will be allowed to enter this area.
“The last zone, farthest from the river, will be permitted to host recreational activities,” he said.
Khanna said at least 3,000 hectares of approximately 10,000 hectares of the riverbed had been “lost” to construction. So, “it is important to make judicious use of the remaining 7,000 hectares”.
While the nature of “recreational activities” is yet to be determined, he said a few suggestions that came up — a Formula One course, among others — during the meet were turned down.
Ruling out canalisation of the Yamuna, Khanna said this was not possible in Delhi due to the nature of the river and the pattern of rainfall in the city. “We studied the possibility of canalisation and ruled that out — this is primarily because rainfall pattern in our country is very different from that of Europe, and the amount of surface run-off in Delhi is much higher.
“The Yamuna also carries a very heavy silt load. While it has been possible to canalise the Thames or the Danube, this is not the case with the Yamuna.”
Khanna said his main aim would be to “preserve as much of the riverbed as possible”.
He said there are 20 “experimental wells” on the riverbed to study the pollution levels and the feasibility of cleaning the river.
Yamuna’s Delhi course
* Covers a length of 48 km — 22 km in urban area. Width varies from 1.5 km to 3 km
* Enters city at Palla and exits at Jaitpur, South Delhi
* Zone ‘O’ of DDA’s masterplan deals with land-use of riverbed and covers approximately 9,700 hectares
* 7 road bridges, 2 railway bridges, 1 Metro bridge, and 2 fair-weather pontoon bridges cross it
* 22 of city’s major drains discharge effluent into it
On riverbed
Existing structures on riverbed include the Delhi Secretariat (houses CM and her Cabinet), Samadhi complex, Akshardham temple, cremation grounds, sports complexes, thermal and gas power stations, bathing ghats, sewerage treatment plants, fly ash ponds and fly ash brick plants. Most of the riverbed is used for agriculture.
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