NEW DELHI: Labour and environment minister Bhupender Yadav and Haryana chief minister Manohar Lal held a meeting in Delhi on different matters, including the issues concerning the state’s “sustainable development”.
While there was no official statement from either side after the meeting, sources said the issue of the Natural Conservation Zone (NCZ) in the National Capital Region (NCR) came up for discussion.
After the meeting, Yadav had tweeted that the two leaders held discussions concerning “Haryana’s sustainable development”. But later it was deleted. In his tweet, the Haryana CM said, “The state government is committed to the welfare of people of Haryana...today held a meeting with Union labour and environment minister Bhupender Yadav at Haryana Bhavan and had wide discussion relating to important issues on development of the state.”
Sources said the environment and forest ministry has favoured “simplification” of the definition of NCZ. Earlier, Haryana had initiated the proposal to change the terminology of NCZ to Natural Zone (NZ) and NCR Planning Board (NCRPB), in its final draft Regional Plan-41, has provision for NZ only. Haryana had also pushed for doing away with Aravalis in the Regional Plan and the final draft plan has no specific mention of Aravalis.
TOI had on July 5 reported how the environment and forest ministry sought complete restoration of the term NCZ in the Regional Plan in place of NZ. Moreover, most of the objections from citizens to the proposed Regional Plan were against scrapping the NCZ provision. These were mentioned in the agenda note of the NCRPB meeting which was cancelled at the last moment.
