Multi-storeyed houses inside ‘City Forest’

A sprawling 400 acre partly-forested land on the banks of the river Hindon, designated as Kanha Upvan, now has multi-storeyed houses with electricity and street lighting that extends over several thousand square metres of its area.

Worse, realtors have already marked out plots for sale on other parts of the land that was named Kanha Upvan in 2004 by then municipal chief R B Maurya. Yet, Ghaziabad’s civic body has made no attempt to get the area notified as a forest by the state government. Perhaps because of simmering dispute over the land. Long before it had been designated as Kanha Upvan, flood-affected families had been handed out ?pattas’ on some parts of the land and have been farming on it ever since.