Corporators turn green

PUNE, Nov 17: All these years, corporators have been gleefully changing green zones and plots reserved for parks and gardens into residentia...

PUNE, Nov 17: All these years, corporators have been gleefully changing green zones and plots reserved for parks and gardens into residential areas. At least to settle a score with the forest department now, they have for once gone in reverse gear – asking residential zone to be turned into green.

Three prominent corporators – two of the Congress, Ankush Kakade and Nilesh Nikam and one of the BJP, Ujjwal Keskar – have tabled a resolution in the City Improvements Committee of the Pune Municipal Corporation seeking to start the process under section 37 of the Maharashtra Regional and Town Planning (MRTP) for changing the residential user on survey 95 in Bhamburda Vanavihar off Gokhale Nagar to green and no development zone; or at least to change the reservation from residential to parks and gardens.

The objective is to deny to the forest department of the State Government the pleasure to chop off more than a thousand trees to make room for bungalows for its officers and residential quarters for its lesser staff. Despite protests raised by citizens and environmentalists like Mohan Dharia the forest department seemed to be going ahead with its World-Bank aided construction project right in the thick foliage of Survey 95 instead of hunting for a better place with lesser or no trees.

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The dezoning proposal is scheduled to come up for discussion in the improvements committee on Wednesday. Tabling of the resolution by the three corporators coincided with a similar demand raised by Col V.P.Taneja (retd), representative of the Express Citizens’ Forum who too demanded that a notification seeking to turn the entire survey 95 from residential to the green zone be immediately issued by the municipal corporation and suggestions and objections called from citizens.

He said even a cursory glance at the map of the Bhamburda neighbourhood (published in The Indian Express on Nov 10) should make it clear that the residential user of the survey is totally anti-forest and anti-environment and seems to have been provided by the town planning department that had prepared the development plan for PMC merely to please its sister department of forest. Any construction there now is ruled out after two decades of meticulous afforestation of the area by this very forest department. Taneja said it would be a shame for the government if it cannot have land enough for proposed constructions transferred from the Animal Husbandry department from the campus of the adjoining Sheep Breeding Farm to save the finest spot in Pune.