By OUR STAFF REPORTER
NEW DELHI, 26 Jun: Chief Minister Pushkar Singh Dhami met Union Minister Bhupendra Yadav in New Delhi today and congratulated him on getting the responsibility of the Ministry of Environment, Forest and Climate Change again. The Chief Minister expressed confidence that under his able leadership, the Ministry of Environment, Forest and Climate Change will set new records.
During the meeting, the Chief Minister shared with the Union Environment, Forest and Climate Change Minister that at present the work of expansion of Jolly Grant Airport in Dehradun is in progress. For this, there is an additional requirement of 87.0815 hectares of land and for this, 87.98 hectares of forest land needs to be acquired by the Civil Aviation Department.
He said that for the expansion of Jolly Grant Airport, out of the total 96.2182 hectares of land in the areas around Jolly Grant, 87.0815 hectares of forest department land is also required to be transferred to the state’s Civil Aviation Department. Dhami reminded Yadav that in this regard, Uttarakhand High Court has already passed a decision in favour of the State Government/Forest Department and hence there is no technical difficulty remaining in transferring the said 87.0815 hectares of forest department land to the civil aviation department for the expansion of Jolly Grant Airport. He also shared with the Union Minister that at present the tender process for operating air service between Jolly Grant Airport and Kathmandu (Nepal) has been completed and in view of this, there is an urgent need to speed up the process of granting Jolly Grant Airport the status of an international airport. After the process of land acquisition and possession is completed, the Airports Authority of India (AAI) will start the work of expanding Jolly Grant Airport.
During his meeting with Yadav, Dhami also urged him that for the purpose of providing basic facilities to the general public in the special geographical, strategic importance and mountainous region of Uttarakhand, compensatory plantation should be permitted in the ‘notified degraded forest land’ available in the state as in the past instead of non forest land as there is paucity of land in the state. For this he urged the Centre to grant an approval to the ongoing forest land transfer proposals for all these purposes.
The CM also shared that Government Polytechnic Chopta is being operated in a rented building in Chopta (Tallanagpur) under Kedarnath Assembly constituency of Rudraprayag district since the year 2014. In view of this, he urged the Union Minister to allow transfer of 2 hectares of forest land previously selected in revenue village Kunda Dankot for the establishment of Government Polytechnic in Chopta. He asserted that with the state having a forest cover of over 67 percent, non forest land is not available anywhere in the said area for the establishment of Government Polytechnic, Chopta. The forest land selected for the establishment of Government Polytechnic, Chopta has not been transferred to the institute for about 8 years, due to which the institute continues to be operated from a rented building, due to which the students studying in the institute are not able to get quality education. With the transfer of forest land, the polytechnic will be able to operate from its own building and the students will be able to get quality education.
