Tree cutting permission issued by BMC is 7 trees per day

At a time when the Maharashtra govt has taken up a task of planting 4 crore trees, the BMC shockingly issues permission to cut down 7 trees daily as per the information provided by the BMC's Garden department to RTI Activist Anil Galgali.

An RTI file by RTI Activist Anil Galgali shows that Garden department of the BMC gave its permission to cut 7,842 trees in the last three years in the year 2014, 2015 and 2016. According to the figures, seven trees were permitted each day to cut," said Galgali referring to the figure.

Galgali also added most of the 3819 trees were hacked in the last year 2016 itself that included 1830 trees were from the private people, 1448 trees belonged the government intities while BMC itself hacked 541 tree owing to different reasons including paving the way for infrastructural  activities.

Reply furnished from the Deputy Superintendent of the Garden Department, has also claimed that apart from cutting 7842 trees in the last three years, BMC also transplanted 13070 trees during the same period. Besides, BMC conducted several tree plantation drives throughout the year in which it planted 49060 saplings in the correspondence year. In the year 2014, BMC planted 14253 saplings, 16157 saplings in 2015 and 18650 saplings were planted in the 2016," says RTI.    

Terming the process of permitting the tree cuttings, Galgali said that the time has come when tree authority should devise a proper mechanism with people's involvement to protect the greenery of the city and to protect the lives of the citizens of the city.

He said, "Cutting the trees in the name of development is avoidable and tree authority need to be made answerable for this. The proper machenism would be to call the people of the adjoining places and to hear their voice too."