A project started by Mayawati government opposite Yamuna riverbed in sectors 14-A and 15-A to beautify a park now surfaces to be a loudy Dalit memorial. The project started early last year and within the span of seven months, the park was closed for morning walkers.

It spreads across 8km from the Noida SP office to Amity University crossing and will house a museum, 11 statues of Dalit icons, including one each of Mayawati, Kanshi Ram and Ambedkar, crafted by BSP’s favourite sculptor Anil Ramsutar. The project is rumored to be bigger than Akshardham temple and with massive construction work at the site even at night; noise and air pollution has rose up.Besides the concretization has lead to the massive fall in the population of some important migratory birds.

The Yamuna Parks Users Association (YPUA) is seeking a stay on the construction that they allege is posing a huge danger to the adjacent Okhla Bird Sanctuary and have filed PIL for the same.

Source- Times of India

The Greater Noida airport plan may well be shelved on Tuesday, when the Group of Ministers led by finance minister P Chidambaram meets to take a final call on the issue.

According to highly placed sources, the ministry of civil aviation is expected to support scrapping any plan to build an airport at Greater Noida and cite the opinion of the Attorney General (AG).

Earlier, the GoM had referred this politically sensitive proposal to the AG to determine whether an airport at Noida violates the concession agreement between the government and GMR Group, the developer of the Delhi International Airport (DIAL). In his report subsequently, the AG clearly stated that till capacity at the existing DIAL is exhausted, no new airport should be allowed to come up.

DIAL is just about 70 km from the proposed airport site at Zevar and as per existing rules, any airport proposal within 150 km of an existing one needs to be examined for implications on existing infrastructure.

Even the current political scenario indicates that the chances of the Greater Noida airport proposal getting a nod are slim. Uttar Pradesh chief minister Mayawati, the main supporter of this project, is at loggerheads with the UPA government at the Centre and it is widely believed that the GoM would agree with civil aviation minister Praful Patel’s plan of scrapping the project all together.