High court allows Mayawati government to chop over 200 trees

LUCKNOW - The Lucknow bench of the Allahabad High Court has allowed the Uttar Pradesh government to chop down 213 trees to make way for a boundary wall around a 120-acre eco park, named after the ruling Bahujan Samaj Party’s (BSP) founder Kanshi Ram here.

A division bench of acting Chief Justice Amitava Lala and Justice Shabihul Hasnain Friday gave the order on a public interest litigation pending before the court to stall the construction of the wall.

Earlier, another bench headed by Justice Pradeep Kant had restrained the state from encroaching upon the road around the park. Tbe state had said the park required expansion. A several decades old lay-out of the area was shown to prove that the “original” road existed there.

However, Justice Kant was very firm about disallowing any narrowing of the public road for the sake of the expansion of the eco park, at the cost of causing inconvenience to tens of thousands of daily commuters. He had also denied permission for chopping down the trees.

While the case was posted for March 5 by Justice Kant, another application was moved by the state government before the acting chief justice who granted the permission for felluing the trees.