Guest guest Posted January 24, 2009 Report Share Posted January 24, 2009 India: Raintree in Behrampore town saved again! A raintree at the heart of Behrampore town was saved from being cutdown today by green activists Jatiya Sabuj Bahini and PaschimbangoBiggyan Mancho, helped by students from Maharani Kashi Sheri Girl’sSchool and KM College School, who were led by their teachers in theprotest. This was the raintree’s second brush with death, after it hadbeen saved by a green movement from being uprooted a few years back.The tree was tied with ropes and surrounded by workers ready withaxes, headed by a contractor reportedly armed with an official order.The contractor never expected that the combined efforts of the localschool’s eco-club members, environmental activists and local kids fromthe area could foil their plans. This morning had been chosen forcutting down the rain tree as it was a bandh day (declared by Suci)and they presumed no-one would be around to save the tree”, said MrKalyan Ghosh, a teacher at Behrampore JN Academy. “But as soon as wewere told that work was in progress to trim the tree’s branches, weorganised our students, rushed to the spot and virtually seized thewoodcutters”, said the teacher. As more local kids joined into theprotest rally, the contractor thought it wise to disarm hiswoodcutters before things could take an ugly turn. Police reached thespot and rescued the contractor, Mr Khurshid Alam, who claimed that avalid tender had been floated by the Behrampore block land and landrevenue office authorizing him to trim specific branches of the tree.The tender made no mention of uprooting the old raintree. A forestdepartment official said in response: “The new office building of WestBengal State Electricity Distribution Company Ltd might have requiredthe branches of the rain tree to be trimmed. However, this is a verydifferent thing from killing the tree.” The SDO, Behrampore, said:“There were definitely no orders given to cut down the tree. Thedistrict administration was not aware of any orders to trim itsbranches. So police were sent in to stop the trimming.” While theWBSEDCL office building was under construction, two raintrees wereuprooted from the area encircling a group of important buildingsincluding the film society, CPIM party office, College of TextileEngineering, government officers’ club and Nabanalanda School.http://www.thestatesman.net/page.news.php?clid=23 & theme= & usrsess=1 & id=241160 http://tinyurl.com/azdupo Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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