HimVani

New Delhi: The Union ministry of forest and environment has suggested demolition of the hotel building coming up in McLeodganj at the place where a bus stand was to be built. This was conveyed to the Central Empower Committee by the ministry through a report on Tuesday, in which it mentioned that the land was given to the state transport minister to build a bus stand, not a hotel.
Earlier, local environmentalists Atul Bhardwaj and Sameer Mehta had approached the Supreme Court in April this year against the construction of the hotel. The state government had already constituted a five-member committee to look into the matter, which had ordered to stop hotel construction work at the site.
Talking to HimVani, Atul Bhardwaj said that the Central Empowered Committee would be visiting the site to take a decision on the matter. He said that during the hearing the state government had proposed to merge the two projects (hotel and parking) but the environment ministry rejected it.
The Union environment ministry had given around 17 canals of forest land to the state transport department in 2001 to build a bus stand, but the land was illegally transferred to the tourism department, which handed it over on lease to Surya Construction for 17 years on build-operate-transfer basis.