Residents claim trees felled for railway stn

Residents of the Shahabad Mohammadpur village in Dwarka, along with members of a local NGO, have filed a complaint with the forest department and the Delhi Police alleging that over 200 trees have been cut without permission from a forest patch behind Dwarka’s Sector 21 Metro station for the Bijwasan Rail Terminal Redevelopment project.

The Rail Land Development Authority (RLDA), which is undertaking the project, said only “smaller saplings” were removed to make way for trucks and other site equipment. These saplings, it said, were those that came up in the past eight years.

Residents said that while work on the project has been ongoing for the past eight years, tree felling started only 10 days ago, with over 200 trees being axed since then.

Naveen Solanki, a 20-year-old resident from the village, who alerted the forest department about the tree felling, said the contractors at the site could not produce any permission order for the deforestation activity.

“Already, around 100 to 200 trees have been cut and we have alerted both the Delhi Police and the forest department. The contractors at the site had no permission papers to show us villagers, when we asked them for one,” said Solanki, stating the area was rich in biodiversity, including nilgai and several bird species.

While the project was initially awarded to the Indian Railway Stations Development Corporation (IRSDC), the government body was shut down last October, and the project was later awarded to the Rail Land Development Authority (RLDA). The railway station is undergoing an airport-style makeover on a public-private partnership (PPP) model, officials in the know of the project details said.

Madhukar Varshney, from the NGO Rise Foundation, who is one of the complainants, said the area, which used to be a dense forest patch, was now completely dug up by earthmovers.

“We can still see the tree stumps of many trees there. The entire area is now bereft of tree cover. After losing the dense forest habitat in the Bharat Vandana Park area, this patch is also being cleared up swiftly, and Dwarka is losing a major chunk of its green cover,” Varshney says.

A senior forest and wildlife department, when contacted, said an inspection was carried out at the site on Wednesday and all necessary documents and permissions for the tree felling are being checked.

“A physical inspection was carried out and trees were found to be cut. These have been photographed and geo-tagged. We are still verifying whether any permission was sought to fell those trees,” the official said.

An RLDA official said since the project was handed over to them in December 2021, no trees have been cut; however, “smaller saplings” have been removed to make room for trucks and other vehicles to reach the site.

The official stated that while no trees were present at the site when the project approval was first sought, some trees have come up there since then.

“These are mainly vilayati kikar(a shrub or small tree of the mesquite kind). We met the forest department and a fresh submission will be given to them for removing these trees,” the RLDA official says.