Axe will fall on 100-yr-old rain trees

Says Nandkumar Naik, a Tree Authority member, who has been campaigning for the two 50-foot-tall trees: “At Thursday’s meeting, all the local corporators from Dadar voted in favour of cutting of trees on the ground that they posed a traffic hazard. But I blame the motorists for not concentrating while driving on Veer Savarkar Marg (Cadell Road). How can they miss out such huge trees?”

The trees had become an inadvertent and natural traffic island in 1979, when the road was widened and the pavement on which they stood was demolished. The last in a series of attempts to fell them came from local member of Parliament and Union Minister for Heavy Industries, Manohar Joshi, who wrote to the municipal commissioner last year requesting that the trees be cut down. The matter was finally taken up by the BMC in May this year.

The trees allegedly impede traffic on the road and the Tree Authority has been told that 21 vehicular accidents were caused on the stretch “due to the trees” between November 1, 1999 and March 15, 2000.

“The BMC has already been directed to install fluorescent lights around the trees, along with caution signs but none of these was followed. I still maintain that the trees are not at fault,” Naik added.

In 1980, the traffic police had sent the first proposal for the removal of the trees but it was rejected. Thereafter several more proposals were received.

In 1996, the state government had to order a stay on the cutting of the trees after being aproached by the Friends of Trees in keeping with the Maharashtra Urban Areas Preservation of Trees Act, 1976.