Hyderabad: Axe continues to fall on trees for flyovers

Rajendranagar: While the precarious condition of road from Bahadurpura to Aramghar on the busy National Highway-44 continues to claim human lives, trampling of trees is taking a toll on the ambient environment as the GHMC is moving on with its road-widening campaign to build two flyovers simultaneously.

While commuters are losing lives on this busy and ill-maintained route, as it turned into gravel-ridden road due to ongoing excavation in middle of the stretch, trees on the waysides are disappearing fast only to turn the ambience completely open to sky, which otherwise provide an avenue shade on road.

After the Tadban area, the GHMC has axed trees just a few metres away from Hassan Nagar to the National Police Academy. Almost two dozen fully grown trees which come in the way of road-widening have been mercilessly chopped, cocking a snook at the WALTA Act.

According to the Act, any person, institution, organisation or department, public or private, providing a public or private utility service, including Roads and Buildings department, Energy of the government and Telecom department shall ensure protection of trees and their branches while developing infrastructure or carrying on their activities. It also says that, wherever laying of new roads or widening of roads involves cutting of trees, authorities may issue suitable guidelines for protection of such tree growth as it deems fit. However, it appears that no such measures were taken before cutting trees haphazardly.

Leave alone trees, human lives are not safe on the ill-maintained roads in Rajendranagar and Bahadurpura areas. After a loss of two lives last year, another incident near Estate Kanta at the same location near Shastripuram, claimed the life of a youth who was run over by a lorry while he was travelling on gravel-ridden road on his bike.

Zaheeruddin, a community activist, said, "ill-maintained roads so far claimed three lives; one at Kattedan and two at Shastripuram Junction in Rajendranagar. While roads in Rajendranagar and Bahadurpura areas are not maintained properly, the work of flyovers add to the woes of commuters often claiming innocent lives. As a result, reports of loss of innocent lives are emerging every few days due to flawed maintenance of roads."

Under the Comprehensive Road Maintenance Program (CRMP), the roads works and maintenance in six circles of Charminar Zone, such as Charminar, Falaknuma, Rajendranagar, Malakpet, Santoshnagar and Chandrayangutta have been awarded to M Venkatarao Infra Projects Private Ltd. Of a total 100 km of road work in the Charminar zone, Rajendranagar area accounts for a work share of around 28.7 km.