80 trees removed from Ajmal Khan Rd after traders called them ‘obstruction’
nNEW DELHI: The North Delhi Municipal Corporation Thursday uprooted almost all of the 80 trees it had planted on the central verge of Ajmal Khan Road in Karol Bagh Market, last July.
This was after office-bearers of the vyapar mandal (traders’ association) demanded that the trees be removed before they grow to “unmanageable heights”.
They said once fully grown, the foliage will “obstruct signboards and advertisement boards as well as the CCTV cameras, apart from hindering the entry of emergency vehicles such as fire tenders and ambulances.”
Ajmal Khan Road is 17 metres wide and the central verge, on which the trees were planted, 3 metres wide.
Despite the assurances of the north municipality horticulture officials that the trees could be “pruned and shaped as desired”, several traders said they were not confident that the civic agency would be able to maintain them, given its limited resources and staff.
North corporation commissioner Varsha Joshi said, “We agreed to remove the trees, but they will be transplanted into flowerpots and put back on Ajmal Khan Road. We are doing it before the saplings become too big for the pots. The whole point of a tactile implementation is to change what isn’t working before it is hardscaped (made permanent).”
The corporation had dug pits in the asphalt concrete on Ajmal Khan Road last July and placed 80 tabebuia rosea (rosy trumpet) and alstonia scholaris (Saptparni) saplings in them.
They had been grown in a nursery for two years already, making their current age 2.5 years. The idea was to beautify the 1.3km road, which was made “vehicle-free and pedestrianonly” in May.
Corporation officials, at that time, had said they chose one evergreen and one deciduous tree so that shoppers could enjoy them all year round. Rosy trumpet bears beautiful pink flowers in winter and alstonia produces fragrant whitish green blossoms in autumn. “These would have been a visual delight,” a senior north body official said.
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We agreed to remove the trees, but they will be transplanted into flowerpots and put back on Ajmal Khan Road. We are doing it before the saplings become too big for pots. VARSHA JOSHI , North corporation commissioner
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We can’t have trees covering our advertisements. This is concerning livelihoods and after a point of time, even courts wouldn’t allow anyone to move the trees. MURLI MANI, president,ajmal Khan Road Vyapar Mandal
Kulbhushan Ahuja, president of the Karol Bagh Traders Federation, said, “Traders, who are an important stakeholder in the project, were never consulted. We had thought that greening would be along the lines of Gangtok MG Road Market in Sikkim where trees and shrubs are placed in large pots on the median.”
“We later came to know that saplings have been placed in soil and these can go up to 25-30 feet and will be unmovable, unlike pots, even in the event of an emergency,” he said.
Murli Mani, president of the Ajmal Khan Road Vyapar Mandal, said, “Business is anyway down. We can’t have trees covering our advertisements. This is concerning livelihoods and after a point of time, even courts wouldn’t allow anyone to move the trees.”
Sanjeev Kapur, secretary of the mandal, said, “We are not against greening/plantation, but it should be planned well.”
The buildings on both sides of Ajmal Khan Road, a commercial street, are ground plus three floors, about 30 metres in height; and 10-12 CCTV cameras have been placed on poles at intersections, each at a height of about five metres.
Horticulture department officials said they were “very disappointed with the situation”.
“The trees are small right now and could have been pruned and shaped as desired. We would have kept the first 10-12 feet of the trees free of branches, so that the view of the shops is not blocked,” an official, who requested not to be named, said.
“We tried to convince traders to wait at least till the summer, when the traders would have welcomed the shade afforded by the trees from the scorching heat,” he said.
Horticulture and landscape design experts said the north body’s plan to put rosy trumpet and alstonia trees in pots may not succeed.
“The plants are young, so they may survive the transplantation. However, it is very cold right now and they will need to be first kept in poly-houses for warmth,” RNS Tyagi, former horticulture director of the central public works department, said.
“These are not pot plants and cannot be kept in confined spaces for more than five or six years of age. After that, they will again have to be placed in soil. Otherwise, their growth will be stunted and they will not have the desired crown, flowers, fragrance or environmental value in terms of oxygen production,” Shree Naik, a landscape architect, said.