Cost of power station: 1,800 trees

NEW DELHI: The `green' Commonwealth Games will see another city plantation sacrificed to its cause.
A 70-acre plot in Ghuman Hera in southwest Delhi where 15,000 saplings were planted a few months back by the forest department as part of compensatory afforestation for various projects and which has several thousand plants has been handed over to the Power Grid Corporation Ltd (PGCL) for the construction of a power sub-station.
Interestingly, there is a vacant plot adjacent to this land where the sub-station could have come up but the government deemed it fit that trees should be sacrificed. And compensated for elsewhere.
So to make up for the estimated 1,800 trees that are supposed to be felled for the sub-station, PGCL will be required to carry out compensatory plantation of 18,000 saplings along with creation of infrastructure like boundary wall, borewells etc that already exist in the earlier plot.
Sources in the Delhi government revealed that the transfer of land took place despite reservations of some departments as the project is essential for the Games. "The plot was gram sabha land according to revenue records. There were many trees there. Though it was not forest land officially, as the plantation there is very recent and it is in the process of becoming a forest,'' said a source.
The land was reportedly transferred to PGCL in October and they are yet to apply to the forest department for permission to fell the trees. "There are about 150 fully grown trees in this plot among the 1,800 that are to be felled. This is over and above 15,000 saplings that were planted some months back as part of compensatory plantation for other projects. Since they are very small, they will not be counted as `trees'. This is sheer waste of time and funds, not to say that this puts at risk all other plantations,'' said a senior official.
Environmentalists say that such an incident points out to the vulnerability of plantations in Delhi since they have no legal protection to save them from development projects and that since the capital has a serious shortage of land, the government should ensure that existing plantations are protected.
"What is the point of destroying one plantation to have it in another plot right next to the first one. The government should have simply had the PGCL project on the vacant land. What is evident is that Delhi does not have enough land for planting more trees and the existing tree cover needs to be protected. What is also not clear is how many trees are being cut in the city and what compensatory plantation is being done for that. The entire point of compensatory plantation is defeated by such acts of the government,'' said Prabhakar Rao, member of NGO Kalpavriksha which, along with other NGOs, had been asked by the government to assess the success of compensatory plantation in Delhi.
Senior officials of PGCL said that such power projects are necessary to meet the increasing demand in Delhi. PGCL chairman SK Chaturvedi who initially denied having any knowledge of the project later said that power availability is a more important issue for the capital and some green cover would have to be sacrificed for the development of such projects. "Environmentalists can decide what they want, trees or power,'' is how he put it.