Minister daughter’s wedding spelt doom for saplings, young trees

The barren Nizam College grounds stand testimony to how the establishment treats its plants, notwithstanding tall claims of afforestation.

The grounds were planted with over 100 saplings in July 2016, when the second round of Telangana ku Haritha Haram programme was kicked off by the Chief Minister K. Chandrasekhar Rao. Two years on, not a trace of any plant remains.

The programme at Nizam College was taken up by the city police, with the present DGP and then Commissioner of Police M. Mahender Reddy launching the programme by planting a sapling. Speaking to media, Mr. Reddy had said the city police and Nizam College management would jointly assume responsibility of the saplings. The drip irrigation equipment installed on the grounds was donated by a private company under Corporate Social Responsibility initiative.

Eyewitnesses said, for a few days, a sub-inspector would regularly make rounds of the college and ensure that the plants were watered. Then all of a sudden, the plants disappeared. High turnout of public to the ground was assumed to be the reason.

As per information shared by college insiders however, it was not the public, but a minister’s daughter’s wedding that had spelt doom for the plants.

Minister Talasani Srinivas Yadav had performed his daughter’s wedding on Nizam College grounds in November, 2016, four months after the plantation. About five to six days before the wedding, the minister’s men reportedly descended on the campus, and removed all the saplings in the name of wedding arrangements. “Not only the Haritha Haram plants, they uprooted even trees which were four to five years old,” shares an official under the condition of anonymity.

Along with the trees, the outwardly visible parts of the drip irrigation equipment were also destroyed, the official says, adding, “The police had laid the drip irrigation pipelines four to five feet underground, and they all started to leak profusely when the dispensers were damaged, turning the ground slushy. The college management had to get valves fixed at water inlet to stop the flooding.”

‘No tree cover’

Mr. Srinivas Yadav flatly refuted the allegations, and said the grounds were used for playing cricket and never had any tree cover. He said “as a responsible person”, he would “never allow such an act”.