BHUBANESWAR: The standing committee of State Wildlife Board has cleared the much-awaited six-lane capital region ring road (CRRR) project.
Sources said the committee in its meeting chaired by Forest, Environment and Climate Change minister Ganesh Ram Singhkhuntia has recommended wildlife clearance for the CRRR project to be taken up by the National Highways Authority of India (NHAI) under the Bharatmala scheme.
The 110.87 km project seeks to link Rameswar in Khurda to Tangi under Cuttack district. The stretch from Gobindpur village in Dhenkanal district to Bandalo toll plaza near Tangi in Cuttack, having a total length of about 40.33 km, requires wildlife clearance as at least 1 km of the alignment of the road will pass through the Kapilash wildlife sanctuary.
The very stretch of the road will also require about 4,180 hectare area for implementation of which, approximately 146.90 hectare is forest land, 97.95 hectare water body and 625.26 hectare tree cover.
“After the standing committee’s approval, the proposal will now be placed before Chief Minister Mohan Charan Majhi who heads the State Wildlife Board for its clearance. Once the board approves it, it will be forwarded to the National Board of Wildlife for necessary clearances,” a senior forest officer said.
The officer also said that after getting wildlife clearance, the project implementing agency will have to apply for forest diversion as per the provisions of Forest Conservation Act. The expert appraisal committee (EAC) of the Ministry of Environment, Forest and Climate Change (MoEFCC) had already approved the CRRR’s Gobindpur-Tangi stretch with at least 1 km passing through the core zone of Kapilash wildlife sanctuary.
The Cabinet Committee on Economic Affairs chaired by Prime Minister Narendra Modi had approved the project to be constructed in hybrid annuity mode at an investment of Rs 8,307.74 crore.
The alignment of the road project integrates three major national highways NH-55, NH-57 and NH-655 along with NH-16 and one state highway (SH-65), providing seamless connectivity to key economic, social and logistics nodes across Odisha. Apart from the CRRR project, the standing committee also approved four other proposals related to setting up of mobile towers in villages lacking telecommunication network.