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Srinagar: The government of Jammu and Kashmir designated an 11-km corridor from Pantha Chowk to Nowgam, on the outskirts of the capital of the Union Territory, as part of a flood-absorption basin in its Master Plan 2035, in 2019. Just about seven years later, it has decided to build an industrial park in the area.

Environmental groups and the Union Territory’s committee members say the 50-acre land in Nowgam, suburban Srinagar, is not the right location for an industrial park. This is because, as the official record states, the area is part of the city’s flood-control system – a spongy part of the land that can absorb excess water.

Their concerns are elevated by both the sudden change in the government’s plans and memories of the devastating 2014 floods in Srinagar, the first such disaster in recent history. Official figures placed the death toll at 44, while other estimates put the loss of life far higher, at over 460, with a million (10 lakh) people displaced. More than a third of Srinagar city and its surrounding areas were fully submerged.

Flood buffer at the centre of the controversy

“We have no problem with building infrastructure or creating employment opportunities. Our basic argument is it must not mess with the local ecosystem or create ecological risks for the future,” says Athar Parvaiz of the People’s Environmental Council (PEC), which submitted, along with the Nigeen Lake Conservation Organisation (NLCO), another green outfit, a representation to Communist Party of India (Marxist) legislator Mohammad Yousuf Tarigami, who heads the J&K assembly’s committee on environment.

Their biggest worry? That the learnings from the horrors of 2014 are being forgotten. They remind that, as per the master plan, no development or construction is permitted in the area where the ‘plug-and-play’ industrial park is proposed.

The J&K Small Scale Industries Development Corporation (SIDCO) is known to have prepared a Detailed Project Report (DPR) of........

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