Nagpur: While the National Highway Authority of India (NHAI) claimed that a total of 1,940 trees will be felled for the construction of inter modal station coming up at Ajni, the real green loss will be around 7,000 trees.
The Rs1,288.81 crore project is coming up on Central Railway land, which is a thriving biodiversity habitat of bird and animal species. In a proposal submitted to the garden department of Nagpur Municipal Corporation (NMC), two NHAI applications have sought permission to cut 1,940 trees on 44.6 acres land acquired for the first phase.
Following demand from activists, a joint survey by officials from NHAI and garden department started in December last year. As per officials, most of the survey is now over and almost 6,500 trees have been marked for felling. “We have almost finished surveying the land and apart from this count, another 300-400 trees that are to be felled might increase. These trees belong to different species,” said Amol Chorpagar, garden superintendent of NMC.
He further informed that after the survey, cross verification will also be done. “We will re-check if the counting has been done properly or not. Apart from us, a third party, most likely Dr Punjabrao Deshmukh Krishi Vidyapeeth, will also undertake a survey,” the official said.
Once the final report of the survey is ready, it will be submitted to municipal commissioner and the tree committee, which will decide the fate of thousands of age-old trees of Ajni Vann.
As per activists, the project is going to cause probably the biggest environmental damage to the city. “The environmental viability of the project remains a big question mark. The tree committee should do an in-depth study of the project, which should include species identification of the trees, how much oxygen they will transfer and how much carbon dioxide they will absorb in the coming years. This should be compared to the carbon emission that will be saved by the inter-modal station during the same period,” said Kaustav Chatterjee, founder of NGO Green Vigil Foundation, adding that NHAI needs to come out with clear calculations rather than assumptions.
Former honorary wildlife warden, Nagpur, Jaydeep Das said, “In less than 100 acres, the count is crossing 7,000. The total project area is 490 acres which means the count of trees will easily cross 30,000. Where is the place to carry out such large-scale compensatory plantation?”