Kejriwal ‘approved tree-felling’in Ridge, claims BJP; AAP hits back

Delhi BJP alleges Kejriwal approved felling of 280 trees, AAP calls it misleading. Supreme Court seeks accountability in illegal tree felling case.

The Delhi unit of the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) on Friday alleged that Delhi chief minister Arvind Kejriwal approved the felling of 280 trees along the 2.3km stretch of the Chhattarpur Satbari-Gaushala Road and said minister of the Aam Aadmi Party (AAP)-led Delhi government have “no moral right” to continue. The AAP, meanwhile, slammed the BJP and said it was misleading the public, adding that 1,100 trees were cut by the Delhi Development Authority (DDA), a department that comes directly under LG VK Saxena.

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In a press conference on Friday, Delhi BJP president Virendra Sachdeva showed purported documents signed by Kejriwal where he allowed 280 of 422 trees to be felled and ordered the transplantation of 142.

“Surprisingly, the document clearly shows that the CM and the environment minister Gopal Rai always knew about the tree felling, and it was the CM who recommended it. Rai signed the file on January 23, while Kejriwal signed on January 24. With the truth of tree felling matter coming out, the entire AAP stands exposed as a party of liars,” Sachdeva said.

Responding to the allegations, AAP questioned why LG VK Saxena did not show the documents concerned in the Supreme Court, when it pulled up the DDA during the hearing. “... The Supreme Court came to know that permission to cut these trees could be given only by it, and no other authority... yet they were surreptitiously cut... After keeping silent for so many days, today the BJP has come up with some irrelevant papers... to spread a bundle of lies. If DDA and LG had permission to cut these trees, they should have told the Supreme Court on the first hearing,” AAP said.

The matter pertains to the illegal felling of 1,100 trees in the eco-sensitive Ridge zone, to widen the road to the AIIMS-CAPFIMS campus.

After the case top court began hearing the case, environment minister Gopal Rai also constituted a three-minister inquiry committee and asked the forest department and DDA to respond with documents. “Environment minister has been repeatedly summoning the officials, but the officials are not appearing before him... all officials are under pressure not to tell the truth to the elected government,” AAP added.

The matter is being heard in the Supreme Court, which has taken a firm stand in trying to fix accountability. During the last hearing on June 26, a vacation bench of justices Abhay S Oka and Ujjal Bhuyan asked the DDA vice chairperson, Subhashish Panda, for a clear statement of facts on who ordered the felling of trees. The court had observed that the road project site falls inside the zone around Asola Bhati Wildlife Sanctuary.

The initial petition, by environmentalist Bindu Kapurea against Panda, mentioned that over 1,100 trees were cut in the area. The petitioner submitted pictures, maps and other evidence to the court.

When the apex court went through the report, it noticed that lapses were committed by DDA and other authorities, including the Delhi government’s environment and forests department, among others. The court observed that on February 14 this year, the principal secretary of the forest department issued a notification under the Delhi Preservation of Trees Act (DPTA) to remove 422 trees. However, the top court observed that “by DDA’s own admission, 633 trees were cut.”