BENGALURU: With 32,572 trees to be felled for the 148-km Bengaluru Suburban Rail Project (BSRP), raising concerns among environmentalists, a committee comprising officials from BBMP and forest department, and environmental activists will be formed to oversee the tree cutting process.
N Manjula, Managing Director of Rail Infrastructure Development Company (Karnataka) Limited (K-RIDE), the implementing agency of the project, announced this during a public consultation meet held at MG Community Hall in the Railway Quarters on Friday. The meeting was held in connection with the environmental and social impact reports of the project which were released a few weeks ago. The meet, attended by over 200 members of the public, was chaired by MD Rajesh Kumar Singh, Director, Projects and Planning, and Prahlad Rao, BBMP Road Infrastructure chief, among others.
Manjula responded to a request by Rajkumar Dugar, founder and convener of Citizens for Citizens (C4C) group. Dugar, who submitted a petition over the proposed cutting of trees, said, “Bengaluru and surroundings will end up losing 32,572 trees, including 17,505 trees at Akkupete, near Devanahalli. This works out to an average of 220 trees per kilometre. Even if we consider trees only along corridors and not for Akkupete depot, the average figure of 102 trees per km is high.”
Calling for an urgent and comprehensive review of trees which need to be cut and the alignment, he appealed for setting up an empowered committee to oversee the entire process.
KN Krishnaprasad, rail activist, stressed that suburban rail was required, and so was the protection of the environment. “32,000 trees is a huge number. Corridor-2 (Benniganahalli to Chikkabanavara) needs to be completed on priority, and its impact on the environment assessed. Only after that must we consider if such a large number of trees needs to be cut.”
Environmentalist Dattatreya T Devarare reminded officials of the Centre’s step in October 2020 to price the fare of suburban rail travel on par with the Metro. “Suburban travel must be cheap for public and should not be priced on the lines of Metro travel.”
Manjula explained that the depot alone required 17,505 trees to be cut, of which 17,378 are acacia and nilgiris varieties.”