After tree-falling cases,standing panel seeks fresh survey

As per BMC’s tree census two years ago,out of the total 19,17,844 trees 3,77,555 trees are on government land,10,38,629 trees on private land,72,570 trees on industrial land,50,332 trees in gardens,1,58,910 on roads and remaining 2,13,216 on other land.

BJP corporator Ashish Shelar said that despite appointing expert committees,the real problem is not being tackled. “We already have a Tree Authority that has experts and its annual budget is Rs 100 crore. What purpose will formation of new committees serve unless proper ground work of inspecting and pruning trees is not being done,” he said.

Kumar said a survey of trees was carried out recently in which about 3,540 trees were found to not have any breathing space around their roots due to concretisation. Additional Municipal Commissioner Aseem Gupta said guidelines are being drafted to keep breathing space around trees and the same will be submitted to the building proposals and Roads Department. “Main cause of healthy looking trees falling is weakening of roots and that either happens due to surrounding construction and lack of open soil breathing face or due to repeated trenching work that damages the roots. In any case,predicting a fall 100 per cent is not possible,because most of trees seem sound and healthy during inspection,” he said.

While the recently-appointed expert committee has only surveyed trees on the roads,the remaining are yet to be inspected. Committee Chairman and Sena corporator Rahul Shewale said that a fresh audit should be carried and along with proper scientific inspection of trees. Sena leader Sunil Prabhu said a proper tree policy needs to be formulated for the same.