As Gujarat is heading tall towards the development of infrastructure, the trees have fallen more in the past few years. 

Due to the route of the metro falling through a dense forest landscape, thousands of trees were chopped off for the Gandhinagar-Ahmedabad metro rail project.

A total of 1,687 trees were chopped down in Ahmedabad and Gandhinagar for the sake of metro routes.

Around 478 trees were destroyed in the areas under Ahmedabad municipal corporation.

Thousands of trees cut

Kiritsinh Jitubha Rana, cabinet minister for environment, forest, and climate change, stated in the Gujarat Assembly monsoon session that 1,209 trees in the forest department area have been chopped off till now, and more trees will face the same fate in the municipal corporation area.

The government also chased returns from those chopped-down trees. 

The minister revealed that the state government reaped  ₹23,600 cr from the trees that were chopped down for the Ahmedabad metro. In Gandhinagar, ₹4.71 lakh was earned from cutting down the trees. 

Which trees were chopped down?

Acacia (Baawad), Jand tree (Khijado), Neem, Indian Siris (Siras), Pongame oil tree (Kanji), Madhuca longifolia (Mahudo), red silk-cotton tree (Simdo), mango tree, mulberry tree (Shetur), and golden shower tree (Garmala).

Ideally, the route of the metro should have been shifted to protect the valuable forest of dense trees, but the inevitable destruction unfolded as soon as the project was unveiled.

According to reports, the highest number of trees were felled in the state capital in 2022. Moreover, 17,432 trees were felled in Gandhinagar and Ahmedabad districts in two years (2021-2022), as revealed by MLA Jignesh Mewani in 2022.

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