Click to play videoBangalore: Environmentalists are up in arms against the Metro Rail Corporation's bid to take over green areas. The activists are fighting to save the 250-year-old Lalbagh Botanical Gardens.
Trees over 60 years old fall in less than 60 minutes as environmentalists watch in pain.
The Bangalore Metro Rail Corporation is using parts of the historic Lalbagh gardens - the city's oldest garden built by Tipu Sultan and his father more than two centuries back.
Advocate, Environment Support Group Sunil Dutt Yadav said, “By way of an ordinance, they've got the Parks and Open Spaces Act amended. Now the legality of that act is still open to question but the larger issue is whether a portion of a historical and monumental park such as Lalbagh can be bartered away for compensation.”
But passions will not stop the cutting of 188 trees identified in and around Lalbagh.
Executive Engineer Bangalore Metro Rail Corporation B L Yashavanth Chavan, says, “Lalbagh belongs to State government project belongs to State government. No permission is required because we're doing as per law. Law doesn't need permission to cut eucalyptus trees.”
When it first began four days ago, the officials were pushed on to the back foot by the sporadic protests, but they later got police protection to carry on with the work .
Volunteer of 'Hasiru Usiru' Roshni Nuggehalli said, “It is just 30 citizens protesting. You don't need eight police vans. So what does it tell you? What does it tell the citizen? What they're doing can't be right.”
Volunteer of 'Hasiru Usiru' Dharma Somashekar said, “All I see in this is nothing but land-grabbing in the name of metro.”
It was the picturesque boulevard on MG Road that first fell victim to the Bangalore Metro rail construction. But as the work progresses and extends to other parts of the city, citizen groups threaten more protests and even court petitions to save the gardens of garden city. After all, who is to decide how much of Bangalore is to be sacrificed.
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