Chandigarh: Protest over felling of 700 trees for a flyover project

CHANDIGARH: A group of green activists protested in the city for felling of some 700 trees to bring about a flyover connecting Zirakpur to Tribune Chowk.
UT Engineering department is handling the project which is being funded by National Highway Authority of India.
TOI tried to contact chief engineer , Mukesh Anand, by calling and texting him message to take his version on the matter, but he did not respond.
Gunjan Rastogi, member of organisation ‘Watch the Footprint’ said, “None of us is anti-development but we want a model of sustainable development where both development and our environment can co-exist with each other. The concerned department must see if they can make changes in the project to save the trees.”
Ravinder Nath, who is involved with organisation Environment Society of India is disappointed with the lack luster attitude of the officials. “It is unfortunate that administration does not pay heed to the outcry of public protest for saving trees felling . We staged similar protests against felling of trees when a flyover project near KC theatre was conceived but it was enforced ultimately .”
However there are hopes that authorities may not be able to push the matter under the carpet anymore. Rajnish Watts, former principal of Chandigarh College of Architecture and member of Chandigarh Heritage Committee and president of Chandigarh Tree Lovers told TOI, “It was a year ago , a team of UT Engineering department had discussed the project with the members of Chandigarh Heritage Committee where they had assured us minimum felling of trees without exactly divulging the numbers exactly. Since the matter is now before media talking about felling of large number of trees , we will soon hold a meeting with the department to get to know the reality from them.”
Talking about the two species of old trees Arjan and Mango which have been earmarked fro felling, he said that Arjan trees existed either near airport and Tribune access point and in sector 27 only in the city while mango orchards have already been shrunk to build Industrial area where most of this buffer zone is already gone. On the issue of building flyover in the city, he said, flyover is not the full-proof answer to the problem of traffic increase as it resolves the problem at one point only.
Madhu Sareen, prominent environmentalist took up the debate further saying, “Flyover create nuisance for the pedestrians and create mess on the road. This is the reason in European countries , they are doing away with flyovers. In city like London, where I lived for 10 years, they made public buses so comfortable and convenient and plying private cars so expensive that people used public transport. Therefore , instead of flyover which do not serve much purpose and involves lots of costing, we must rather invest in strong network of good public buses to meet the demand of a small city like Chandigarh.”