Gurugram: MCG plants over 100K saplings in 3-month-long drive

Nearly 1.06 lakh saplings were planted by the Municipal Corporation of Gurugram (MCG) across the city this monsoon season — the highest in the city so far. MCG started

Nearly 1.06 lakh saplings were planted by the Municipal Corporation of Gurugram (MCG) across the city this monsoon season — the highest in the city so far. MCG started its three-month-long plantation drive on June 27 in collaboration with the residents’ welfare associations (RWAs) of the city to plant saplings on all weekends during the months of July, August, and September.

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As part of this process, MCG asked RWAs to send them details of the type and quantity of saplings they wanted to plant. Accordingly, the civic body distributed the same from their own nurseries free of cost. Last year, the civic body developed four of its own nurseries across the city in four different locations — Kadipur village, Sector 15 Part 1, biodiversity park near Nathupur, and Sector 46.

Overall, 269 RWAs took part in this year’s drive and a total of 1, 05,910 saplings were planted, as per the data shared by the civic body.

MCG had launched this drive to curb the diminishing green cover of the city and increase it over time. According to a 2019 Forest Survey of India (FSI) report, only 9.2% of Gurugram’s total geographical area is under forest cover, where as in 2017, it was 9.3%.

“We realise the importance of green cover in the city, especially in regards to checking air pollution. Hence, we coordinated with RWAs for our plantation drive this year not only to ensure that various parts of the city get covered but also to make sure that there is an additional body looking after the saplings apart from the MCG. Our objective is not only to plant saplings but to look after them properly,” said Vinay Pratap Singh, commissioner, MCG.

Prior to 2020, MCG officials said that the highest number of saplings planted in the city in a single season was less than 10,000.

“Due to the drive’s success this year, we will try to replicate similar measures in the next monsoon season as well and aim at increasing the existing green cover in the city even further,” said Singh.

During the drive, MCG planted saplings of fruits, such as papaya, pomegranate and guava, and trees, such as babool, peepal, gulmohar and kachnar, apart from other ornamental plants, shrubs, medicinal plants, and native varieties.

MCG officials said that this year, the audit of the planted saplings has been conducted to ensure they can be periodically maintained and assessed. They further said that the audit will also help the civic body to understand which plants, shrubs, and trees are best suited for Gurugram’s climatic and soil conditions so that they can plant only such saplings in the future drives.

“Due to multiple construction projects, more than a thousand trees had to be axed in our area over the last decade, which led the a significant decrease in the green cover. Since there are a large number of vacant plots in both DLF Phase-1 and Phase-2, which were lying unutilised, we reached out to the MCG to provide us with saplings so that we can plant the same in both the colonies. After the drive, residents within the colony were allocated the responsibility of looking after the saplings,” said Dhruv Bansal, spokesperson of DLF Qutub Enclave RWA, which looks after DLF phases 1 and 2.

Bansal said that there are still a large number of vacant plots in both the colonies and the RWA would again be submitting a request to the MCG for more saplings next year. He said that more than 20,000 saplings were planted in the two colonies during the three-month period.