With an aim to rejuvenate Gandhian principles and values and to immortalise the historical salt march undertaken by the Mahatma in March-April 1930, the UPA government has launched a unique Rs 25-crore green project for Dandi and the surrounding villages to transform the area into an eco-friendly tourist destination.
The project was inaugurated by Union minister for environment and forests Jairam Ramesh and Mahatma Gandhi’s great-grandson Gopal Krishna Gandhi at Dandi village, near Navsari, here on Wednesday.
The project will be based on Gandhian principles for environment conservation and village development and will have major features like mangrove plantation in 100 hectares of land on the coast, bio-shield development, beach nourishment, conservation of coastal features and wetlands, harnessing and encouraging use of renewable energy sources such as solar and wind, conservation of water, waste management, transformation of target villages into carbon-neutral areas.
Mr Ramesh said Dandi is a historical place and the government with the participation of local communities should create something that can always commemorate the salt march which had shaken the foundation of the colonial rule in 1930.
The project will be implemented in two years and panchayat members will monitor it subsequently.
As part of the project, Dandi and three neighbouring villages Samarpar, Matwad and Onjal will be declared eco-sensitive zone under the union environment protection act.
To celebrate 75 years of the Dandi march, the UPA government had announced a project to develop the 376-km Ahmedabad-Dandi route into the “Heritage Road and Corridor” in 2005, work for which is on. The Centre allocated Rs 10 crores as corpus fund for this project. He said decision of moratorium on new projects in Vapi and Ankleshwar, which were among the 43 industrial hubs identified as “critically” polluted, was not political. According to him, Vapi and Ankleshwar industrial estates in Gujarat are the top-ranking polluted clusters in the country.