Heritage peepals chopped, NGT wants green fines for violations

Time of India

18-07-2025

Gurgaon: National Green Tribunal (NGT) took note of the illegal felling of heritage peepal trees by Faridabad Animal Husbandry department on its office premises, which violated tree-cutting conditions that required transplantation.
In a hearing on July 16, the principal bench, headed by Justice Prakash Shrivastava, noted that while felling permission was granted with conditions, the department cut down at least eight ficus trees—including five peepal trees—without fulfilling the requirement to transplant them. The order came in response to a petition filed by Viyana Berwal and others, who raised concerns over the act being committed on govt land.
Following the petition, a joint committee constituted by the tribunal visited the site and found evidence of the violations.
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According to the committee's report submitted in Jan, the agency received permission to cut 52 trees on the condition that it would plant 260 saplings and transplant 8 ficus trees. However, during inspection, the six trees were found felled without evidence of transplantation.
Moreover, the report said that the user agency was to plant five times the number of trees and transplant 8 ficus trees along with submission of the land plan for plantation, but deputy director of Animal Husbandry Department violated the condition and cut down 8 ficus trees instead of transplanting them.
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"During the joint committee visit to the said premises, stumps of 3 peepal trees and 3 other ficus trees were found. Despite obtaining felling permission, the user agency was found to have violated condition number 12 of the felling permission," the report read.
The tribunal took note of the report and said the violation could attract environmental compensation. "In view of the findings recorded by the joint committee, the issue of calculation and imposition of environmental compensation arises.
Haryana State Pollution Control Board (HSPCB) has now been impleaded as respondent in this original application," read the order of the bench including chairperson Prakash Shrivastava, Judicial Magistrate Sudhir Agarwal and expert members A Senthil Vel and Afroz Ahmad.
HSPCB was not originally a party in the case. The tribunal directed the board to file an affidavit calculating the environmental compensation based on the joint committee's findings and submit it a week before the next hearing, which is scheduled for Oct 16.