Aurangabad: The Aurangabad Municipal Corporation (AMC) is cutting trees at the mango and chikoo orchard at Harsul Sawangi to expand its waste facility. The civic body has not sought the permission of the tree authority in the AMC nor has it issued any public notice in this regard.Meanwhile, activists are irked by the AMC’s insensitivity. The civic body first started cutting the trees in June. Around 70 trees were cut to dig a mammoth pit on a 4000-sq-ft area under the guidance of the AMC’s sanitation inspectors in June.Later, the civic body decided to expand its existing waste facility by undertaking civil construction. Subsequently, it started axing custard apple and chikoo trees. TOI had published a ground report on September 14 along with pictures of the trees that had been axed by the civic body. The AMC had briefly stopped the work at the site.As per a fresh video shot by locals over the weekend, more trees are now being axed. Activist Ayyub Patel said that when the workers were asked to produce the permission to cut trees, they said that they cannot answer. “There has been no response to our queries that were sent to the garden department about the permission to cut trees,” Patel added.“Around 70 to 80 trees belonging to the orchard have been marked to be chopped down, out of which many trees have already been cut. The 7/12 extract of the site has a record of around 50 mango trees,” Patel said.Meanwhile, the AMC garden superintendent Vijay Patil, chose to be in outright denial about the cutting of the trees. “The garden department of the AMC has not been informed about any cutting of trees and they cannot cut any trees without our permission. I, along with the head of the garden department Vasant Nikam, were at the site for the last two days and no trees have been cut,” Patil said. However, at the same time, Patil spoke about working on a mechanism to relocate the trees that were cut.Kishor Pathak, a member of tree authority committee of the AMC confirmed that no applications have come before the committee regarding the cutting of trees at Harsul Sawangi. “As far as relocation is concerned, we have written to the municipal commissioner to try and save trees from being cut in the first place. The relocation of trees has not fared very well in Aurangabad in the past,” Pathak said.

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