Aarey, here too? Hundreds of trees to be cut for Indore Metro

INDORE: Like Aarey forest sacrifice, ‘mini-Mumbai’ Indore is also gearing up for a similar onslaught against Mother Nature by cutting hundreds of tree on around 30 hectares of land in Chhota Bangadada near Super Corridor. A depot for proposed Metro Rail project is being planned there.
The forest department has identified 351 trees on the land, which can be transplanted elsewhere and will have to cut to setup the depot here.Besides, there are a dozen peepal trees, which have recently been transplanted here from elsewhere as they were posing as hurdles in ongoing development works. Depending on usage of land, where these peepal trees have been transplanted, forest department will take a call to again shift or cut it for Metro rail project.
According to information made available by divisional forest officer (DFO’s) office, ministry of environment, forest and climate change has given on-principal approval to state government’s proposal to transfer about 30 hectare of forest land situated on Super Corridor Road in Chhota Bangadada for setting up a depot for proposed Metro rail project of Indore.
Before giving final approval, the ministry asked state government to fulfill its 10 conditions including paying Rs 6.26 lakh/hectare i.e. around Rs 1.89 crore for transferring land and also bearing expenses (about Rs 1.91 crore) to plant 30,000 trees at the similar stretch of land in Dhar, which the local administration has transferred to the forest department as part of ‘compensation’. “The state government has submitted a report of fulfilling all the conditions as informed by the ministry. The proposal to transfer around 30 hectares of forest land situated on Super Corridor near Chhota Bangadada is likely to be taken by the ministry in its next meeting,” DFO ML Harit told TOI.