The Sikh community in Mumbai, led by the Maharashtra Sikh Association (MSA), on Monday planted 11,000 saplings along the Sion-Panvel highway to commemorate the 550th Guru Nanak Jayanti.
The plantation was carried out under the Union government’s Green Highway Mission project.
Over the next three years, the MSA will maintain a 25-km stretch from Mankhurd to Panvel. Sant Baba Sewa Singh Ji unveiled the mission near the Mankhurd octroi naka. “We will not just plant trees along the 25-km stretch but have also committed to maintaining them. The project cost of about ₹3 crore will be borne by members of the community,” said MSA convenor Bal Malkit Singh.
With a target of 1 lakh km, the National Highways Authority of India in 2016 unveiled ‘Adopt a Green Highway scheme’ to engage corporates, public sector units and other government departments in the greening of national highways under their corporate social responsibility programmes. Nitin Gadkari, the Road Transport and Highways Minister in the outgoing Union government, had earmarked a departmental budget of ₹5,000 crore for the purpose.
Under its Green Highways (Plantation, Transplantation, Beautification & Maintenance) Policy 2015, the government aims at helping the environment and local communities and generating employment by planting trees along all the highways in the country.
The policy envisages a strict system of auditing whereby money will be released to empanelled agencies only if they have achieved a survival rate of 90% in the previous year.
