The Karnataka High Court has directed the Bengaluru Urban District Tree Authority to inform the court whether any steps have been taken to carry out census of existing trees as mandated in the Karnataka Preservation of Trees Act, 1976.
The court also asked the authority to give instances, if any, on planting of trees in the place of fallen trees or those destroyed due to force of nature or other natural causes as per the provisions of the Act.
A Division Bench comprising Chief Justice Abhay Shreeniwas Oka and Justice H.T. Narendra Prasad issued the direction on June 24 during the hearing on a PIL petition, filed by Dattatraya T. Devare and Bangalore Environment Trust, depicting the “sorry state of affairs” in implementation of the provisions of the law for preservation of trees.
“One of the mandatory duties is preservation of all trees within its jurisdiction. Another important duty is to carry out census of the existing trees. The objections filed by the tree authority do not indicate that such census has been conducted,” the Bench observed in its order.
Green cover
On the allegation made in the petition that the green cover of Bengaluru has been reduced by a drastic 78%, the Bench said in the absence of a census, perhaps it may not be possible for the government to dispute the correctness of this claim.
Meanwhile, the government made a plea to permit the tree officer to exercise power for granting permission for cutting trees as per the Act by modifying the April 22 interim direction in which the court issued direction for constituting a committee of experts from the fields of environment, science, technology and concerned fields to examine whether the trees proposed to be felled could be saved by adopting any method, and to permit felling of trees only after exhausting all methods to save the trees.
However, the Bench said that it would consider the government’s plea for modifying the order on constituting the committee if the tree authority, in its statement to be filed, would convince the court that the authority is functioning in terms of the provisions of the Act and is discharging its mandatory duties.