Bengaluru: BBMP, which had planned to chop down 300 trees to widen Palace Road and Jayamahal Road between BDA junction and Mekhri Circle; and between Mekhri Circle and Cantonment railway station, will now cut only 112.
It should be noted that BBMP had annoyed citizens and green activists when it first announced that it had to cut 300 trees to widen the 2.85 km stretch of road.
More recently, sources from BBMP said the number of trees to be cut had been brought down from 300 to 112.
Asked about this sharp decline in the number of trees to be cut, a senior official of BBMP said, "There is no magic done here to reduce the 300 trees to 112 and then to bring it down further. We changed the plan of building a Bus Rapid Transit System (BRTS) (bus-based mass transit system), which we had planned earlier."
The official continued, “We are aware of the public’s opposition to tree-cutting. We too do not wish to cut any trees. But Bellary and Jayamahal roads have become bottlenecks and to ease the constriction we are compelled to take this step,” he said and added that small changes were made to the previous plan.
“The first change was to drop the BRTS, which will prevent most of the tree cutting and the other was to retain the existing ones and use them as a median,” he explained.
According to the new plan, the existing 24- meter road will be widened to 40 meters, with a 3-lane world-class road on double sides with concrete surface (white topping), the official said.
Within 2 or 3 days the BBMP will finalize talks on giving transfer of development rights (TDR) to Mr Chandrashekar Raju of Holiday Resorts, whose property along a 1.7 km stretch has to be acquired for road widening.
Tenders will be called before December 25 for road widening, he said.
