Amid the protest against the proposed massive tree felling in Ajni Railway Colony for construction of Inter Modal Station, Union Minister for Road Transport and Shipping Nitin Gadkari, on Friday, changed his mind and instructed National Highway Authority of India (NHAI) to translocate all 5,000 trees of Ajni Vann to another place. Along with this, NHAI will carry out compensatory plantation of 25,000 trees in city limits. Gadkari, chaired a meeting on Friday evening in which all senior officials of various departments were present. In the meeting, while discussing about the Ajni Vann protest, Gadkari instructed NHAI to translocate all 5,000 trees to another place without felling any tree in Ajni area.

 

“No tree will be chopped in Ajni area for the IMS Project. All 5,000 trees will be translocated to other places in the city and Nagpur Municipal Corporation (NMC) is going to decide the place for translocation,” said Abhijit Jichkar, Project Director, NHAI to The Hitavada. Jichkar also said, “NHAI will take care of survival of all 5,000 trees which will be translocated to other places. Along with this 25,000 trees will be also planted as compensatory plantation beside city roads.” Gadkari emphasised on the survival of the translocated trees after the process. He also instructed that the process of translocation and plantation would start from July end and the authorities must complete all formalities as early as possible. He asked to form a committee under the presidentship of former CSIR-NEERI Director Dr Satish Wate and also include environmentalists in the committee.

 

The committee will decide all stages of the translocation and plantation process and also take vigil of their survival. NMC will prepare a report of translocation and plantation and it will submit to NHAI for further perusal. However, environment activists of Nagpur called the translocation idea a big flop because the survival rate of translocated tree in Nagpur is very less. “We have so many bad examples of translocation that carried out by Maha Metro in the city. It is just a murder of trees by uprooting them and leave them on different place to die,” said Jaydeep Das, former honorary Wildlife Warden and environment activist. “Instead of killing of such a huge number of trees, NHAI should shift the IMS project at Khapri which will solve many problems easily,” Das added. Kaustav Chatterjee, Founder, Green Vigil Foundation, said, “Nagpur climate is not suitable for translocation of all type of species.

 

Invasive species like Subabul should not be translocated as they are not environment-friendly. Similarly, indigenous species like Neem, Peepal, Banyan, Tamarind etc., should replace Subabul in compensatory plantation plan.” The meeting was attended by Mayor Dayashankar Tiwari, Municipal Commissioner Radhakrishnan B, MLA Pravin Datke, MLA Mohan Mate, NHAI Regional Director Rajiv Agrawal, Dr Satish Wate, Swanand Soni, Kaustav Chatterjee, Nishant Gandhi and senior officials of different departments.