Akash Vashishtha of Hindustan Environment Action Group (HEAG) filed a petition with the National Green Tribunal (NGT) for extending the norms of the urban development ministry.
The guidelines, issued in 2000, is currently applicable only to Delhi, while there are no central norms for urban green spaces in town and city planning for the rest of the country.
The union urban ministry issued the norms on greening of urban areas and landscaping the whole of the country for conservation and judicious use of natural resources, particularly land, water and soil in 2000.
The petition also seeks a ban on the mindless concretization, which was endangering the ground water conditions in Ghaziabad, declared as a "critical area" by the Central Ground Water Authority.
Hearing this petition, the NGT issued notice to government agencies here and in other National Capital Region (NCR) towns against concretization of ground surfaces. NGT asked the respondents to appear before the tribunal September 2.
The NGT issued notice to several agencies including the Central Ground Water Authority (CGWA), the Ghaziabad Development Authority (GDA).
The petitioner pointed out that blatant concretization was raising temperatures by as much as six degrees Celsius and atmospheric carbon levels (a major greenhouse gas that leads to atmospheric warming), preventing rain water percolation by 90 percent and destroying the urban green cover.
