TAJ CORRIDOR

By Brij Khandelwal

Agra May 7 (IANS)

The controversial Taj Heritage Corridor which brought down the Mayawati government in 2003, was Monday resurrected in a new avatar.

The local MP and chairman of the SC/ST Commission Ram Shankar Katheria Monday laid the foundation stone of the new Taj View Garden, sandwiched between the iconic Taj and the Agra Fort.

The Supreme Court some years ago had asked the Archaeological Survey of India to clean up the debris from the corridor site and develop the 80 acres of reclaimed land as a green buffer to insulate the Taj Mahal from air pollution. But for want of resources, it took more than a decade for work to start on this ambitious joint project of the UP Forest department, UP horticulture department and the Archaeological Survey of India.

The UP horticulture department’s  garden superintendent Mukesh Kumar told IANS "we have laid a new lush green lawn and lined up ornamental plants. Coming rainy season the whole area would be a green delight and attract tourists."

The Agra mayor Navin Jain said the municipal corporation would extend the green frontiers and maintain the newly developed park. 

Once completed, the green stretch will be a new attraction for tourists.

Till recently the land was being used not only as a dumping ground for garbage but also as a place to bury bodies of children and aborted foetuses. The sprawling 80-acre platform, recovered through dredging of the river bed and refilling of the open space, was left unfinished after corruption charges were levelled against Mayawati. The charges eventually brought down her government.

The corridor was to begin from Khan-e-Alam, close to the Taj Mahal, and end two kilometres towards the city behind Agra Fort. It was to be extended later to allow tourists to reach Etmaddaula and Ram Bagh on the other side of the river.

For months, hundreds of tractors, earthmovers and machines worked round the clock to dig out silt and deposit it on the riverbank to create a new platform, which was laid with Rajasthani stones.

But, after a hue and cry from conservationists that the corridor would endanger the monument and allegations of large-scale corruption in the project, the central government suspended the work in 2003. The scandal involved government allotment of large tracts of land along the proposed corridor to a private builder for a song.

As the case against her dragged on for years, the corridor remained an eyesore between two world heritage monuments.  Scores of foreign tourists daily visit the site and take pictures that are not too flattering.

Environmentalists have on several occasions expressed concern at the alarming pollution level in the Yamuna after hundreds of trucks of waste was littered around with carcasses of animals and bodies of children.

The Rs.175-crore ($3.5 million) project was to be built on a platform raised from scooped silt of the river.

When tourists look at the Taj Mahal from Agra Fort, what they see is disturbing -- heaps of stinking garbage, carcasses, graves of children dotting the structure and mounds of rubble that invite mosquitoes, dogs, snakes, crows and vultures.

"Such an ugly sight near the world's most beautiful monument can be repulsive and nauseating," said environmentalist Dr Harendra Gupta.

Rajiv Gupta, former president of the National Chamber of Industries and Commerce told IANS “a positive beginning has been made and soon Agra will have a new tourist attraction.”