For the 150-odd trees that were in danger of getting sawn off for road development works between Botanical Gardens at Kondapur and University of Hyderabad (UoH), the High Court has come to their rescue.
It has asked the Greater Hyderabad Municipal Corporation (GHMC) to allow the voluntary agency – Vata Foundation, to relocate the trees. And accordingly, in the last few days, the Foundation has managed to relocate about 17 trees from the Kondapur stretch near the Botanical Gardens to Gaudium school in Kollur, explained Sumisha Reddy from the organisation.
There are about 150 trees on this road and the municipal corporation had actually called for tenders for removing the trees, when the Foundation decided to intervene. When numerous meetings with the senior municipal officials did not lead to any solution, the Foundation approached the court seeking a direction.
“We had to get a court order, which came about 10 days ago, to save the trees. Our efforts in talking to the municipal authorities to desist from cutting them did not help. So we had to go to the court,” said Ms. Reddy. In the coming weeks, the Foundation is planning to shift more such trees on this stretch in a similar fashion.
This is not the first time that the Vata Foundation had intervened to save trees from getting chopped off. Prior to this, Uday Krishna Pedireddi, also a patron of the Foundation, had called for help from the public and corporate sector in a bid to relocate 300 trees, which were felled at Raidurgam for the same reason. He was seeking funds to transfer them to the BITS Pilani campus here.
