Ex-bureaucrats slam Central Vista project

nNEWDELHI: In a letter to the central government, 60 former bureaucrats and diplomats, including former secretaries, have expressed “grave concerns about the Central Vista Redevelopment Project” and urged the government to see the “fallacy of the project and issue notifications to keep the work from going ahead”.

According to the letter, at a time when the government needs to step up its efforts to help boost the economy due to the coronavirus pandemic, spending Rs 20,000 crore on the Central Vista project is like “Nero fiddling while Rome burns”.

“When enormous funds are required for strengthening the public health system, to provide sustenance to people and to rebuild the economy, taking up a proposal to redesign the entire Central Vista at a cost of at least Rs 20,000 crore, a figure likely to escalate significantly, seems particularly irresponsible,” states the letter.

The signatories to the letter include Vappala Balachandran, IPS (Retd), former Special Secretary, Cabinet Secretariat, Meena Gupta and Tishyarakshit Chatterjee,

former secretaries, Ministry of Environment and Forests, Aruna Roy, former IAS officer, and Harsh Mander, former IAS officer and social activist.

Addressed to housing and urban affairs minister Hardeep Puri, the bureaucrats reminded the government Central Vista is a heritage site and “construction and redesign on the scale planned in the redevelopment project will significantly affect the heritage nature of this precinct, and destroy it irrevocably”.

“The redevelopment planned will, moreover cause severe environmental damage,” states the letter, a copy of which was accessed by Hindustan Times.

A query sent to the ministry over the letter remained unanswered till the time of going to press. “It is sad to note approvals of empowered supervisory bodies like Environmental Assessment Committee of Ministry of Environment and Central Vista Committee have been pushed through in great haste at meetings convened at short notice while the country is in lockdown due to the Covid-19 epidemic... These bodies have, unfortunately, been reduced to mere rubber stamps with notes of dissent not even recorded,” the letter states.