BENGALURU: The number of trees set to be felled for development projects might be on the rise, yet the
Bruhat Bengaluru Mahanagara Palike
(
BBMP
) has not planted a single sapling this year.
Last year, the Palike had planned to plant
10 lakh
saplings; 9 lakh by donating
saplings
through its ‘green app’, 1 lakh along roads and around its parks. The app allowed NGOs, councillors and individuals to place orders and collect them from nearby nurseries. But only 5.5 lakh saplings were planted, with the remaining languishing in nurseries.
“Due to the model code of conduct for the assembly elections in May, we couldn’t start the tender process. The
horticulture
committee approved our proposal to plant 70,000 saplings only last week. Our aim is to plant 1.7 lakh saplings next year, during the pre-monsoon period,” said deputy conservator of forests Cholarajappa.
Officials donated 5.5 lakh saplings through the app and claimed they still get a good response, with some NGOs requesting up to 1,000 saplings at a time. They said seedlings will continue to be distributed through the app till their stock ends.
Monsoon claimed 90 trees
During the monsoon this year, 90 trees were uprooted and branches of over 1,000 broken across the city. In addition, the civic agency identified and removed 56 dry trees and pruned dry and weak branches of over 200 trees.
Since the ideal period to plant saplings is just before the monsoon, experts say there’s no point in planting saplings now, indicating that the civic agency has lost out this year.
“I met officials several times, but they insisted they did not have approvals or required funds to go ahead with the drive. As it is, this plantation drive is not transparent; when we filed RTIs to find out how many of the previously planted saplings continue to live, we did not get an answer,” said tree doctor Vijay Nishanth.
According to Cholarajappa, of the 1 lakh saplings planted by BBMP last year, only 80%-85% grew. “We’ll now be floating tenders for maintenance of these seedlings, including watering, weeding and hoeing,” he said.
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