Title - Roadblocks removed for new railway bridge at last

Northern Railway's longstanding quest to get Archaeological Survey of India's clearance for a new railway bridge near the 16{+t}{+h}Century Salimgarh Fort may finally come through now with the National Monuments Authority (NMA) unofficially approving a no-objection certificate for the project's completion. “The NOC will be issued in a week's time,” said Pravin Srivastava, member-secretary of NMA, on Monday. However, Northern Railway officials said they learnt of the approval only through media reports. “We had made a presentation to NMA earlier this month and the officials had almost agreed to the revised alignment that was proposed,” said Dharm Singh, Chief Administrative Officer (Construction) of Northern Railway. “No official communication has reached us yet.”Construction of the new bridge that will connect Old Delhi to Eastern India and will see close to 250 trains using the line was stalled when the ASI objected on the ground that it will harm the Fort which forms part of a World Heritage Site. Soon after, the Indian National Trust for Art and Cultural Heritage (INTACH) was commissioned by Northern Railway to prepare a ‘cultural impact assessment' study. “We proposed a new alignment that favoured both the Railways and the ASI. The lesson is that for large infrastructure projects such cultural impact assessment studies can provide a solution to both development projects and conservation efforts,” said Divay Gupta, Principal Director, INTACH's Architectural Heritage Division. “The more than 150-year-old bridge which is currently being used can be conserved by ASI and used by the public.”

However, the environmental impact of road traffic surrounding the fort needs to be looked into. “When we undertook an environmental assessment study, we found the Fort is affected more by the traffic around it than the Railway, which will run on electricity rather than dies