The Hindu : Tree Officer plays a mighty 'executioner'

Online edition of India's National Newspaper
Sunday, Feb 02, 2003

Southern States

Southern States - Karnataka-Bangalore

Tree Officer plays a mighty 'executioner'

By Alladi Jayasri

BANGALORE Feb. 1. Here is another instance of how people cut off their noses to spite their faces. And never mind if a healthy rain tree, that has been a benign presence for 70 years, planted by the family patriarch decades ago, has to die in the scuffle.

This has also come as a harsh reminder that in Karnataka, the first State to give itself a Tree Act in the 1970s, neither the tree nor the law is treasured.

The rain tree, in a small private layout between Bull Temple Road and Ranga Rao Road, was the cynosure of all eyes, spreading its canopy at the entrance to an apartment building on the land owned by the Mahadevans.

One of the apartments happens to be the guesthouse of the Indian Overseas Bank, and the bank officer currently occupying it has been picking on the Mahadevans, demanding that the tree be felled, as it was not safe to the building. A dispute over the ownership and other aspects is pending in court, and until then the Mahadevans hold the rights to the land and the rain tree.

Fearing for the safety of the tree, Shyamala Mahadevan approached the Tree Court and obtained a decision from it that the tree posed no threat, and would last a good 10 years more.

In an ironical twist, the bank official went to the same Tree Court, and got the order reversed, and armed with a new order, began cutting up the rain tree two days ago.

Ms. Mahadevan waited the whole day to meet the Deputy Conservator of Forests (Urban) to save the tree, and it seemed to the devastated family that it would be all gone before someone pulled up the Tree Officer.

At the fag end of the day, the Tree Officer was pulled up and asked to explain how he cleared the tree-cutting when the property was in dispute.

By the time an order to stop felling reached the Mahadevans the following morning, the tree was chopped to just two feet above the ground.

When The Hindu photographer reached there on Friday morning, the IOB representative tried to prevent him from doing his job, and later, made allegations against the Mahadevans. He also claimed that the residents of the neighbourhood had signed a petition asking that the tree be chopped.

The tree is inside the apartment compound, the plot lying next to it belongs to a brother of Mr. Mahadevan, and those who signed the petition have houses on the other side of the road, about 40 ft. away, and have no locus standi on this issue, Ms. Mahadevan points out.

The tree is not quite dead, and will grow to flower again. But the role of the Tree Officer who seems to have eagerly played the executioner has dangerous portents, fears Ms. Mahadevan.

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