The Forest Survey of India has prepared a report saying that the number of trees cut without permission to widen a road in Delhi’s Chhatarpur area is over two-and-a-half times the figure provided by the Delhi Development Authority and Lieutenant Governor VK Saxena, The Indian Express reported on Tuesday.
Saxena is the chairperson of the Delhi Development Authority.
It is unclear whether the report has been submitted to the Supreme Court, which is hearing a case pertaining to the alleged felling of hundreds of trees by the Delhi Development Authority in violation of Supreme Court orders.
The court had previously mandated that no trees in the Delhi Ridge forest area could be cut without its prior permission.
According to the Forest Survey, a total of 1,670 trees were felled to widen the road in the national capital. Of these, 1,136 were inside the Ridge forest area and 534 were outside it.
The Forest Survey is a statutory body under the Union Ministry of Environment, Forest and Climate Change that conducts surveys and assessments of forest resources in the country.
On May 16, the court directed the Forest Survey to submit a report on the number of trees cut by the Delhi Development Authority and to assess the resultant environmental damage. On October 22, Saxena told the court that the actual number of trees felled was not 1,100 as had been told to the court but approximately 642.
In its report, the Forest Survey said there were discrepancies in the figures submitted to it by the Delhi forest department and the development authority.
“There is a difference between the figures given by the Delhi Forest Department…and that of the Forest Survey of India,” the report said. “As per the Delhi Forest Department, total enumeration of number of trees in Right of Way required to be felled is 629 trees inside Recorded Forest Area (RFA) and 422 trees outside RFA.”
It added: “The number of trees estimated by the Forest Survey of India… are 1,331 trees inside RFA and 1,762 trees outside RFA.”
The Forest Survey report said that there had been errors in calculating the number of affected trees while the project was still in the proposal stage. The estimated number of trees in the project area was about 3,093 whereas the project proposal set it at 1,050.
“These differences clearly indicate that the number of trees proposed for felling and number of trees actually felled were grossly under-reported,” it said, according to The Indian Express. “Similarly, the number of trees reported to be felled is less than half the number estimated by FSI.”
It said that the “most shocking thing” was reporting the wrong number of standing trees.
“How can the number of standing trees given by the Delhi Forest Department differ from the number of trees actually standing on the ground?” the report asked. “It was learnt that they [forest department] had not marked the boundary of the project area on the ground before enumeration, although boundary file was available with them.”
The report added: “If the project boundary is marked on the ground, the actual extent of the area on the ground can be seen at the time of enumeration, and enumeration can be done inside the boundary.”
The matter began in May after the court initiated a contempt case against Delhi Development Authority Vice Chairman Subhasish Panda for allowing the trees to be chopped down without the court’s approval.
The Delhi Development Authority had previously filed an application seeking the court’s permission but later went ahead without one.
In July, the bench criticised the Delhi government for exercising its “non-existent powers” by issuing a notification in February that allowed the Delhi Development Authority to chop the trees. The court also criticised the lieutenant governor.
Last month, Saxena told the Supreme Court he did not know that the court’s permission was needed to carry out large-scale tree cutting in the Ridge area.
The lieutenant governor acknowledged that in February, when he visited the site of the road widening project to facilitate access to the Central Armed Police Forces Institute of Medical Sciences in the Ridge area, he had been informed that the permission for felling trees was awaited from the “competent authority”.
Saxena said he asked that the approval be expedited, but did not realise that the permission of the court was required. He said he found out in March that the court’s permission was mandatory, by which time the trees were already being cleared.