CM order on axing mango trees irks environmentalists

PK Jaiswar

Tribune News Service

Amritsar, December 28

Chief Minister Parkash Singh Badal’s order to cut fully grown age-old mango tree at Horticulture Garden, Attari, has come a shock for the residents of the area and environmentalists who were crying hoarse over this.

Now, Punjab’s former health minister and senior BJP leader Laxmi Kanta Chawla has come against the move and urged the CM to withdraw the decision. The Horticulture Department is contemplating the axe over 400 mango trees grown up in over 28-acre land. The department has a total of 101-acre fruit orchard at Attari. It is now thinking to replace it with pear trees. The officials of the department pointed out that it earns between Rs 8-10 lakh a year by way of auctioning of mango orchard which gave fruit on every alternate season which means there would be no income on every second year.

Recently, when CM was holding sangat darshan programme at Attari the issue was raised and he asked authorities to replace mango trees with pear trees, which is more profitable. The department has pears, mango, litchi, pear and malta trees at their orchard at Attari.

Chawla today said the move has saddened the people as it would lead to chopping of around 450 fully grown trees. The state government has already played havoc with the environment with mindless chopping of hundreds of trees, including peepal and banyan in the name of development. Nobody knows where the government had planted new trees and when they would grow up.

Parkash Singh Bhatti, an environmentalist, said the government after chopping the fully grown mango, peepal, neem, banyan trees and replacing with foreign varieties of trees which are not conducive for the local environment, hence they died soon. He said the government should immediately stop mindless axing of traditional trees.