Mail from Tasneem sent to the group on the 12th of Nov’05
Subject – Tracking Trees at Nana Peth.

Today Vinod Jain and myself were visting sites at Nana Peth, where permissions for tree felling were sought. We just set foot into Nana Peth and right in front of us, 203, Nana Peth there was a Peepal tree chopped down. We asked for the permission letter but they did not have it with them. In fact Mr Nitin Mehta who is the owner of the tree,  said he would come there in some time with the permission letter but never arrived. We called up Khaire and he sent his person Mr Nagawade to inspect the site. By that time of course all the people felling the tree disappeared. Nagawade told us that permission was given only at the insistence of some the Tree Committee members, otherwise the garden dept. stated that there was no need to remove the tree.  Since we found a number of birds nests we also informed the forest department, who were equally prompt in sending their person who took note of the situation.  Shubhada Patwardhan from Loksatta also joined us.  It is important to note here that while the Garden dept. has asked contractors to make sure that birds nests are not harmed, they say they can do no more!. It becomes the responsibility of the applicant, contractor and the forest department to take care of such issues.We then went to see the last remains of a huge Peepal tree opposite Alpana Talkies at Ganesh Peth. The felling was reported by Vinod Jain and according to him no permission was given for it. The tree was felled last Sunday (which is what usuall happens) when the garden dept is not working. Hopefully the tree will survive. I will find out more and inform the group.From there on we went to two other sites (Peepal trees again!), where we found inconsistencies. For eg in one site, there is only one tree involved but in the record, five have been mentioned. This of course could also be a small typing error but we will need to confirm this. At the second site the application was made under the name of a tree committee member but the owner of the tree is another person (both t seems are good friends). The tree in this case is about 35-40 years old and when we asked a family member of this person why this will be cut - she said that they do not want to cut it off but just trim it a bit. Yet on the other hand the record mentions that it needs to be removed completely so as to facilitate constuction work.

Mail from Satvasheel to the group on the 14th of Nov’05
Subject : Site Visit at Bibwewadi

As per the Site Visit here We observed the facts:

1] According to the report the Trees are in between the roads but the facts is far away from the report.The tree of KateSawar is really "Beautiful" and full grown of about 30+ years old and not on the main road.

2]Not a single Tree is  in mid of the road so there is no need of cutting the trees.

3]In report they mention about the replantation of the trees but it is almost impossible the size of trees are huge.

4] the Repors are fake.

5] On that road "any" type of vechile can pass with out any problem.

6]We had the snaps of the site for further action.

Mail from Tasneem sent to the group on the 24th of Nov’05
Subject – Site Visit Yesterday with the Garden Dept.

Vinod and myself conducted a site visit yesterday. We started at 12:00 and finished the visit by 3:00.  We were accompanied by Mr Nagawade from the Garden Dept. This was a joint site visit with reference to the blanket objection that Vinod had taken against most of the docket i.e list of applications for felling (which was sent to the group).

 Well, in these three hours we managed only three site visits!....Ghorpadi, Bibwewadi and Koregaon Park.   At the site in Ghorpadi three tamarind trees, each almost 100-150 years old were to be felled to make way for a construction site. At the Koregoan Park site which is just next to the petrol pump on the main road, there were some trees that were trimmed and another that was cut down to a small size and is now dead. We are not sure if permission was given (which they say it was) we will come to know only after we verify the records. 

The following is an account of that meeting sent by Shantha Bhushan:

The meeting was held at Mahatma Phule sabagrah of PMC.
AT the appointed time, we were told that neither MR Khaire (The Garden Superinteneint) nor Mr Nitin Kareer (Pune Municipal Commissioner)  will be present and the officiating person will be the supervisor. After some protests by members of the Pune Tree authority , the additional
commissioner was summoned and the meeting began . There was a lot of interest in the fact that apart from Vinod jain, there were six- seven of us interested in the proceedings. Vinod jain was asked to present his objections in a specific manner. Out of the 100 odd applicatins in the docket, Vinod and Tasneem had filed objections to about 26 application where they coudl make site visits.  A patient hearing was given and after this we were asked to leave so that they could make their decisions.
They said they will convey their decision soon.

Those of us who were present felt very strongly the need to meet and discuss how to change
A) the Maharashtra Tree Act (needs to modified. there are lot of loopholes)
B) the working of the tree authority needs to change
C) there needs to be more transperancy, less corruption in these matters

Do the awareness among citizens on the available spaces for stopping tree
cutting is not enough.  Vinod Jain, MR Juneja, Mr Vaz and members of Kalpavriksh felt that we should meet at Sambhaji park on 19th dec, tuesday at 2 Pm.