Need to make compensatory planting must before nod to cut trees, Delhi govt told

The Delhi government was asked on Tuesday to explore the possibility of making planting of saplings mandatory before it grants permission to fell trees for development projects in the national capital.

A bench of justices MB Lokur and Deepak Gupta sought a response from the state government within a week on the suggestion that was placed before it by Delhi-based orthopaedic surgeon, Kaushal Kant Mitra. Additional solicitor general Pinky Anand was told to get instructions on Mitra’s plea, which also questions a proposal to set up a waste-to-energy plant in Delhi for which the concessionaire wants permission to cut 203 trees.

Although the concessionaire has offered to deposit the cost towards compensatory afforestation, Mitra has opposed it by citing figures to show that fresh sapling never get planted in lieu of chopped trees.

Mitra’s lawyer, Gopal Sankaranarayanan, said the Delhi government was not in a position to afford more felling of trees. He pointed out the 2018 Comptroller and Auditor General (CAG) report which stated that there is a deficit of as many as 8.45 lakh trees which were supposed to be planted under the government’s “Green Delhi” initiative.

“Further, the CAG notes that there was inadequate internal evidence on the files of the forest department’s offices for the physical verification of the fact that they were actually planted and/or that they survived”, the court was told. Mitra’s application also claims the “Tree Authority of Delhi” has met only once in the last five years.

This indicates there was no application of mind in allowing precious trees to be cut, the application said.

“The way out is that the contractor or agency authorised for the project must first plant the sapling, which should be verified physically before permission is extended to cut the trees,” Sankaranarayanan said.

Mitra is also the petitioner before the Delhi High Court, which had on July 4 stopped the tree authority not to permit felling of trees. The concessionaire for the waste-to-energy project had moved the HC seeking a modification of its order and to allow it to cut the trees.

The company claimed that the project had been approved by the top court-appointed Centrally Empowered Committee subject to South Delhi Municipal Corporation (SDMC) depositing the cost for planting 10 times the number of trees that would be cut.

Sankaranaryanan argued that trees should not be cut since compensatory afforestation was not viable in Delhi, a city that has been facing acute water shortage.