In the name of widening of road from Besa Square to Pipla Village, the administration of Besa-Pipla Nagar Panchayat is translocating around 60 full-grown trees to other places. Due to rapid development work going on in Besa and Beltarodi area and increased traffic movement, the administration is widening the road from Besa T-Point to Besa Square and then, upto Pipla Village. The administration is constructing cement road on this stretch, and for this, all the roadside trees will be transplanted to open plots of the Nagar Panchayat. “Widening of road is needed as the population has increased drastically in recent time in Besa-Pipla area. With the help of CSIR-NEERI, we are transplanting the trees to open plots near Pipla Village,” Bharat Nandanwar, CO of Besa-Pipla Nagar Panchayat told ‘The Hitavada’.

 

The administration is constructing a 70 ft wide road on this stretch. For this, the translocation of trees has already started. However, the green activists of the city claimed that translocation is a failure in Nagpur city and administration should think of saving such trees instead of translocating them. “Translocation of trees is a complete failure in India except some species of Banyan trees which can survive even after translocation. There are many such translocation projects carried out in city by Government administrations but most of them have failed,” claimed green activist Anasuya Kale Chhabrani. “The translocation process is a costly activity and our administrations try to do it with limited available techniques,” said Chhabrani.

 

“The survival rate of translocation is just 60-65% in our country. For translocation, we require huge amount of water. In this process, we are carefully uprooting the tree without damaging or minimal damage to its roots. However, after placing the tree in the new pit, we have to be careful about fungal growth on trees at new location,” claimed Dr Vilas Yeole, scientist, CSIR-NEERI and the person who is spearheading the translocation in the project. “All these translocated trees require five years proper maintenance and our team will take care of these trees for the next 60 days till the sprouting takes place. Thereafter, the administration should maintain them for the next 5 years,” said Dr Yeole. Earlier also, Besa-Pipla Nagar Panchayat translocated 70 trees to open plots which were uprooted from Besa T-Point to Besa Square for cement road construction on that stretch. The translocation took place one month ago. However, when the translocation is not 100 per cent successful in Nagpur, then why the administration is wasting public money?