10L saplings to be planted in Mohali district

Mohali, July 12

The administration is set to plant 10 lakh saplings with 12 nurseries during the monsoon. Deputy Commissioner Aashika Jain said the nurseries would focus on practical, real-time plantation and monitoring.

She said all the departments running various plantation schemes have been asked to converge their targets with a common programme so that it could be assessed as a joint, result-based exercise. Similarly, various NGOs have been requested to express their interest to the local administration or through the GM District Industry Centre so that they can be helped where they have to do plantations to sort out the issue of availability of land they had to face earlier.

She said, “We are choosing the government lands in general to plant the new saplings, besides considering the voluntary space provided by the private sector.”

Soliciting help from industrial units, private educational institutions, and developers, she said the plantation would be demand-driven. She has asked stakeholders to raise a request to their respective government departments to be part of the drive.

The DC said that to ensure that every plant is taken care of, a geo-tagging photograph has been made mandatory. She said the departments and government entities have been asked to be part of the drive to make the district pollution-free. She said the Department of Rural Development and Panchayat has submitted a demand of 1,52,900 saplings based on the earmarking of 240 acres of land, primarily followed by 45,000 saplings by the Municipal Councils of the district. The DC said the rest of the departments, including GMADA, Mohali MC, and Education, have also been asked to send in their demands immediately to make the plantation drive a success.