Learning from the experience, the Yamuna Standing Comm-ittee, an apex technical body, in 1979 said that “the minimum spacing between future embankments on the banks of the river Yamuna should be five km". In other words, the river deserved a minimum of 5 kilom-etre space as its own. It must be noted that even at that time at no place did the river's width in Delhi exceed 3.5 kilometres. Clearly on technical grounds, the then available flood plains in Delhi could not be compromised any further.
But in 1998, the Delhi Metro got major part of the river bed at a place called Shastri Park in east Delhi for constructing a depot, station, residential flats and later even commercial properties.
In 2000, the private trust developing Akshardham temple used a favourable political climate to relinquish an already allotted piece of land in the Pandav Nagar area of east Delhi and occupy a large part of the riverbed. Later in 2002, the Delhi Development Authority (DDA) constructed an embankment with no public utility, almost a kilometre inside the existing eastern marginal bund also known as the Yamuna Pushta, presumably to safeguard the temple from any future flood's fury. Read the full report here.
Source: Manoj Misra, Hindustan Times, New Delhi.
