BENGALURU: A months back, the residents of Bannerghata road were shocked to notice that about 245 trees were cut from Bannerghata road to Dairy Circle for the metro line. The worried residents and environmentalists met the Deputy Conservator of Forest, Chola Raju and extracted a confirmation that none of the trees in the Bannerghatta stretch should be further cut for the Dairy Circle-Nagwara underground metro line until public consultation is done. But on Saturday morning they were shocked to see that that BMRCL had started marking down trees in the dairy circle stretch.
Arun Prasad, an activist noticed that more than 20 trees were marked at the Dairy Circle stretch. “While I was passing through the Dairy Circle stretch, I was shocked to see that the trees in the stretch were being marked. When I asked the person why was he marking it. He said that it was BMRCL’s order to mark the trees as it will be cut down to make way for the dairy circle-nagwara underground line.
Even after meeting the DCF and getting the required confirmation, this is happening. Already Bengaluru is becoming a city with pollution. If trees are cut of then then it’s a threat to every human being” said Prasad. Harini Raghavan, member of the Knights for Queen group said. “It is really disappointing to see this after we get all the necessary confirmation, this happens. We had a meeting with both DCF and the BMRCL engineers and it was said that there will be a public consultation and no tree will be touched. Then why this? They had even told us that they would take us through the stretch and then discuss over it but that also never happened. We need to have a public consultation meeting as soon as possible.”
When Raghavan spoke to a BMRCL engineer he said that the trees were being marked to show it during the public consultation meeting. However when The New Indian Express spoke to the BMRCL engineer he said.
When TNIE tried calling the DCF, Chola Raju he was unavailable to comment.