Union Minister for Water Resources, River Development and Ganga Rejuvenation Uma Bharti has said that the Eco Sensitive Zone, which was announced by the previous Central Government, needs to be reviewed because they seemed to have made it without doing proper homework. She further said that the Prime Minister Narendra Modi has categorically instructed his Cabinet colleagues to visit a State in full ministerial strength to ensure the State’s grievances are addressed and redressed promptly. In this process, Uttarakhand would be the first State where such experiment is implemented and probably all the pending issues will be sorted out with the officials being engaged in serious discussion. She further said that the plight of Uttarakhand is peculiar. On the one hand, the State has a string of snow-capped mountains and on the other, it has been grappling with acute water scarcity. It is paramount to save holy Ganga and its tributaries. Besides, water harvesting must be stressed. “Through this, we would ensure free flow of Ganga even during Ardh Kumbh-2016.” As far as Eco Sensitive Zone is concerned, it is impractical because whosoever has drafted it had not cared to visit the area physically. Even the former CMs, including Dr Ramesh Pokhriyal Nishank and Vijay Bahuguna and even the incumbent Harish Rawat, have strongly objected to that. She would personally raise the matter before the Union environment ministry. She will urge for amendments, she said. Talking about the disaster-2013, which devastated Kedarnath and wreaked havoc across the State and annihilated its tourism as well, Bharti said that there is a need to go for introspection into why such a catastrophe had befallen the State. “We know climate has become fragile and vulnerable to mercurial changes in places like Kedarnath and Badrinath. This is because of the lack of harmony between development and nature. Earlier, things were different. We must delve deeper to understand what has gone wrong and to go for the course correction to stop such disasters from recurring.”