Once the second greenest city of India, Nagpur has lost its green cover rapidly over the last few years. Want to know why? The Nagpur Municipal Corporation's garden department, which is duty bound to plant five trees for every one that it allows to be cut, appears to have done nothing except recovering deposits.
In the last seven years, the NMC has permitted the chopping down of 3,432 fully grown trees which are in addition to hundreds that were cut without permission or choked to death due to the apathy of NMC officials or got uprooted due to heavy winds.
The garden department also recovered a deposit fee of Rs 65.61 lakh in the period from 2005-06 to 2011-12 for giving permission. During this period, it was mandatory on the applicant to plant either five trees or pay civic body to do so. Around 14,825 trees should have been planted in the city during this period. However, as per the records available with NMC itself, only 984 trees were actually planted by applicants.
"The department returned Rs 4.18 lakh to applicants as they promised to carry out plantation themselves," a senior NMC official with garden department said.
Sources at NMC informed that though hundreds of trees have been illegally cut in city in the last seven years, the garden department has sent notices to exactly 15 parties and registered criminal cases against them. NMC garden superintendent N B Shrikhande said that applicants wanting to cut trees had to inform NMC's Tree Authority why they needed to do so. The garden department and town planning department officials then conduct an inspection and recommend whether permission is to be given or not.
Shrikhande said, "Since last year, the NMC has made it mandatory for people and organizations seeking permission to cut trees to plant five trees themselves before permission is granted. These individuals and organizations must plant five trees for each that they want to cut. These saplings should be two or three years old and ones that grow at least 10 feet as they do not require much protection. The applicant will also have to deposit Rs 2,500 per tree with NMC."
Felling a tree without permission of civic body is a serious offence and attracts a fine of Rs 5,000 per tree or a one year imprisonment.
Shrikhande said, "This year we have planned to plant over 4,500 saplings of neem, banyan and other species in open grounds and locations suggested by the corporators in their wards."
The plantation will be carried out every year. It has already planted 2,500 trees along road side, NMC lands like schools and near water tanks last year.
"We are identifying major roads, grounds and vacant spots in all the zones where saplings could be planted. The NMC plans to spend almost Rs 40 lakh from its budget for this drive," said Shrikhande.
0 comments:
Post a Comment