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The National Highway expansion project has cut down 951 trees in Coimbatore district in the last five financial years and earned a revenue of around `38 lakh. But not even a single sapling was planted by the wing in the same period in spite of the court judgment that three saplings must be planted for each tree felled.
This was revealed in an RTI reply by the National Highway Wing, to V Easwaran, Coimbatore district Secretary of MDMK. Easwaran had sought details regarding the trees felled and saplings planted by the wing in the last five years. In 2010-11 and 2011-12, a total of 951 trees were cut,” said Coimbatore divisional engineer S P Palanivel in his reply.
However, the wing said that it had earned Rs 37,21,950 from the chopped wood. Out of a total of 951 chopped trees, 898 were on NH-67, which connected Nagapattinam and Gundlupet in Karnataka.
While green activists were not against the widening of roads, they came down heavily on the callous attitude of the wing, to fail to plant saplings to compensate for the loss of greenery, in spite of orders from the court mandating planting of trees.
The amount earned by selling the chopped wood must by diverted for planting the saplings,” said Easwaran in a statement.
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