Nagpur: FIR against KRIMS hospital for trimming trees sans permit

NAGPUR: While taking his usual morning walk on Saturday, municipal commissioner Radhakrishnan B saw a few labourers chopping trees at the KRIMS hospital in Ramdaspeth. On enquiring, he found that the hospital had not taken permission from the civic body.
The commissioner immediately called the garden department and zonal officials who filed a first information report (FIR) against the hospital.
TOI learnt that during the investigation, the NMC found that around 6 fully grown trees of different species were heavily chopped. “The reason given by some hospital staff was the problem caused by leaf litter. This is least expected from medical professionals. At least they should understand the importance of trees and not cut it for trivial reasons,” said civic officials.
Accepting that it did not have permission to cut the branches, KRIMS hospital stated that they were creating obstruction for patients and their kin. “We have always been pro-environment and since many years we have been doing plantations too. We realize the importance of tree conservation and had planted those trees ourselves,” said administrators Rajesh Mehta and Chandrakant Udgikar in a release.
NMC officials said that no citizen can trim or fell trees in their own property without NMC’s permission. “We want to appeal to the citizens to not damage city’s green cover for such small reasons,” said NMC superintendent Amol Chorpagar.
The official further informed that to ease the process of seeking permission, the garden department has also empowered zonal officials to grant permission to fell trees for specific reasons. “People don’t need to come all the way to NMC’s main office. They can go to their zone office where officials have been allowed to grant permission for genuine reasons like drying up of tree or if it is posing any danger,” added Chorpagar.
Activists demanded that apart from paperwork, strict action should be taken against offenders. “What happens after NMC issues notice or filed FIR is important. Unless stringent punishment is given, nothing will change,” they said.
On Friday, TOI reported how the proposed felling of a 208-year-old banyan tree at a private plot in Sitabuldi sparked a controversy. NMC officials informed that they are submitting the objections to state tree authority as the tree comes under ‘heritage’ category. Also, as reported on Saturday, data raveals that 3 trees are being cut every day since the last 80 months.