A meeting has been planned between Rajya Sabha MP Medha Kulkarni with the divisional commissioner and the commissioners of PCMC and PMC on January 29. “We will mainly discuss two issues, firstly, that the Riverfront Development Project (RFD) is encroaching the riverbank and, secondly, the cutting of trees. We will also discuss whether the DPR has been sanctioned,” said Kulkarni from Delhi on Friday, a day after she spent more than two-and-a-half hours at the RFD site, seeing the Riparian zone, the wetland, the riverbed and the dumping of material, among others. PMC commissioner Rajendra Bhosale and municipal officers were among those present.
Kulkarni’s party, BJP, is the moving force of the RFD, an idea that was first proposed by the PMC in 2016 and was, subsequently, adopted by the PCMC.
When Prime Minister Narendra Modi laid the foundation stone of the project in March 2022, he said the ambitious project would clean and beautify the 44 km stretch of the rivers within city limits. Kulkarni says that, like her party, she is also keen on the project “but this is not the way. It should not be the loss of nature”. “We can do it in a better way. I am not against the project, nobody is against the project,” she said.
Kulkarni visited the site on Thursday at the request of citizens groups and environmentalists concerned about the RFD. “Right now, all the trees at the Ram-Mula confluence have been marked. There has been huge dumping of material on the PCMC side right at the confluence as well as under the Ambedkar Bridge, where there is a two-storey dumping right at the critical meander of the Mula river,” says Shailaja Deshpande of Jeevitnadi, which works for the rights of rivers. Deshpande points out that the dumping in the Ramnadi, at the confluence, was blocking one side of its flow.
“They have also dug into the riverbed, constricting the flow. A group of people went to Medha Kulkarni to request her to visit the locations and see what is happening on the ground. Officers are projecting that there are some groups who are opposing the RFD. I would like to make it clear that we are not opposing the RFD but only the way it is getting implemented,” she said.
Deshpande says that Kulkarni literally saw everything. “She called up the Commissioners, RFD officers, consultants and whoever was concerned with the project and asked a lot of critical questions,” says Deshpande, who adds that the activists, environmentalists and citizens groups hope that Kulkarni will talk to the Centre, which is providing the funds. “We hope that she will talk to Niti Aayog and Jalshakti Mission and explain the ground realities and our grievances,” says Deshpande.
“It is not as if we have not given alternative designs. PMC has actually created a Detailed Project Report on Ramnadi’s 800 metres by appointing a consultant. This plan uses all bio-engineering and ecological principles but it is not getting incorporated into the existing RFD. They are, instead, pushing what is not supposed to be done,” says Deshpande.
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