‘New Balaji temple in Mumbai will be in deep waters’

Mumbai Armed with fresh evidence that the 10-acre plot for the Tirupati Balaji Temple at Ulwe in Navi Mumbai is a landfill on an inter-tidal wetland, environmentalists have apprehended that the project will be in deep waters.

The Bhumi Puja for the temple was performed barely five metres from the now existing wetland, green groups have bitterly complained to the Centre and the State governments. The Maharashtra Coastal Zone Management Authority (MCZMA) has given the CRZ nod without considering a major fact that the plot is part of a temporary landfill for a casting yard for the Mumbai Trans Harbour Link (MTHL).

A comparison of the Google earth maps of 2018 and now show that the temple plot itself stands on what used to be a vast stretch of an inter-tidal wetland, NatConnect Director and environmentalist BN Kumar wrote to the Union Ministry of Environment, Forest and Climate Control (MOEFCC) as well as the Chief Minister.

The casting yard created for the Mumbai Trans Harbour Link (MTHL), inaugurated in September 2019, is a purely temporary landfill on about 20 hectares which included 16 hectares of mangroves, NatConnect said quoting official documents such as the Environmental Impact Assessment (EIA) from MMRDA and Japanese financial agency JICA. Mangroves can be seen even now close to the plot, it added.

Kumar pointed out that CIDCO itself, in its press release in April last year, announced that the temple plot is part of the casting yard area and that MMRDA agreed to vacate the 10 acres.

Talking to Bizz Buzz, Nandakumar Pawar, head of NGO Sagarshakti, said: “Our fear is that once this 10-acre plot gets regularised, the entire 20 hectares will be leased out for concretisation which will be detrimental to the environment. The MCZMA, while according its nod, has restricted the construction of the replica of Tirupati Balaji temple by about 75 per cent of the 10-acre plot due to CRZ restrictions.”

MCZMA which held a hurriedly convened meeting with less than 24 hour notice on May 23 gave the CRZ nod for the temple project noted that the 40,000 st mtrs of the plot 2748.18 sq mtr is under CRZ1A, 25,656.58 sq mtr in CRZ2, while 11,595 sq mtr is outside CRZ. The construction is to be confined to the non-CRZ area. Development on CRZ2 is to be considered only after the finalisation of the Coastal Zone Management Plan (CZMP) as per the CRZ notification-2019.

The minutes of the meeting, which have recently been uploaded after nearly two-and-a-half-months, however, do not reflect the fact that the entire land piece is a temporary landfill which CIDCO seeks to make a permanent one which is illegal, Kumar said.

CIDCO and the Tirumala Tirupati Devasthanam have apparently not disclosed that the plot for the temple has been carved out of the MTHL casting yard.

The Chief Minister has asked the Principal Secretaries of The Environment And Urban Development Departments to look into this issue as well. The CM has already directed the top bureaucrats to examine NatConnect’s previous complaint against CRZ violations in the temple project. Kumar said he has nothing against the Balaji temple project per se, and it could be allotted an alternative plot in Navi Mumbai itself. Pawar, in his complaint to the MOEFCC and the CM, called for a high-level inquiry into the entire episode and requested for restoration of the casting yard area to its original status by removing the landfill. This is important not only from the point of view of maintaining biodiversity, but restoring the fishing activity by the local community whose means of survival has been snatched away with the construction of the MTHL as well as the casting yard, Pawar said.