Chandigarh, February 19
Work on a number of important infrastructure development projects, including the widening of various state highways and other roads, construction of bridges and flyovers besides the four-laning of busy highways, continued unabated even when electioneering was at its peak in Punjab early this month.
The work on these 40-odd projects, which has been in progress at break-neck speed for the past several months, may leave this agricultural state poorer as far as its tree cover is concerned.
While sources in the Union Ministry of Environment and Forests say that permission has been granted for felling nearly 15,000 trees, including the state tree, shisham, along the important state highways and other roads, the number of trees being axed appears to be much larger.
An extensive tour of the state during the first half of this month revealed that almost all important state highways, including the Chandigarh-Rajpura, Chandigarh-Ludhiana, Chandigarh-Nawanshahr and Tanda-Jalandhar, besides others, would be stripped of their green cover.
A massive exercise has already been in progress on most of the roads which are being widened or upgraded to four-laned highways. Though the development versus environment debate will continue unabated, Punjab’s shrinking tree cover must be causing worry and concern to ecologists as well as environmentalists.
The other day, an aerial survey of some parts of the Malwa belt, especially in Bathinda, Faridkot and Muktsar districts, revealed a disturbing picture. Trees are missing not only from villages and residential areas but their density on river and canal embankments and highways is also touching an alarming low.
The “disappearance” of majestic and impressive tree cover, including those of shisham and eucalyptus, is horrifying. On Sunday the Chandigarh-Ludhiana highway had frequent traffic jams as some of the old and beautiful eucalyptus trees were being felled for the widening of the road.
The same is the case with other roads. The other day, as a Tribune team was travelling from Tanda to Jalandhar, some beautiful and old trees were being felled. Most of these were very old. It is not only the green cover or shade they provide will would disappear now, but their usefulness in several other ways, including in maintaining the ecological balance, subsoil water and providing shelter to human friendly birds to facilitate pollination, will also be lost in the name of “infrastructure development”.
The major projects that are being undertaken are the Morinda bypass (scheduled to be completed by the end of July this year to solve the problem of traffic jams at the manned level-crossing on the Chandigarh-Ludhiana road), widening of the Ludhiana-Khamano stretch , construction of two road overbridges at Morinda, widening of the SAS Nagar-Kharar section, four-laning of the Desu Majra to Kharar road, widening of the Zirakpur-Rajpura road, widening of the Rajpura-Patiala road and construction of a rail overbridge at Rajpura to take care of another traffic bottleneck, construction of a rail overbridge at Khanna, widening and strengthening of the Balachaur-Banga road, the Phagwara bypass; and widening of the Jagraon-Nakodar road and
Gurdaspur-Mukerian road.
