Nagpur: Over 100 fully grown trees have been allegedly chopped without permission by state Public Works Department (PWD) on the 22 acre premises of the sprawling and lush green Government Polytechnic located at Sadar.Some big trees were completely cut from base while some were also burned along with the leftover branches and garbage. The identification of all trees couldn’t be done on Tuesday.TOI found that the big trees including Pepul, Cassia and Subabool were brought down over the last couple of days. All the trees are located on open spaces or away from the main building housing several departments and library. None of the treee were posing any risk to students or faculty members.Nagpur Municipal Corportion (NMC) garden superintendent Amol Chorpagar said no permission was given for cutting or trimming any tree at the polytechnic premises. “The panchnama couldn’t be done since we came to know about the incident late. It would be done on Wednesday,” he said.Principal Chandrashekhar Thorat said the entire maintenance of 105-year-old campus comes under the PWD. He said they had asked the PWD to carry out cleanliness drive since a lot of weeds had grown everywhere.Executive engineer RR Jaiswal said he wasn’t aware of the tree cutting at Government Polytechnic and referred TOI queries to junior engineer Suresh Padhye. The junior engineer said the PWD had hired labourers to carry out routine sweeping and upkeep of the campus.Initially, Padhye admitted that some trees were ‘trimmed’ but when asked if NMC permission was sought, the junior engineer backtracked and denied that the PWD cut trees. In fact, he blamed the departments to cut the trees. “The polytechnic departments too are carrying out trimming of trees when branches obstruct windows and are close to buildings,” he said.Padhye said since the groundwater level is good in the area, shrubs and weeds crop up very fast and therefore they had to be removed regularly. He also denied any burning of chopped branches and waste material on the premises by PWD labourers.Polytechnic officials said that during the monsoon session, a top technical education officer had asked them to ensure cleanliness on the premises. In continuation of those orders, they had asked the PWD to look into the issue.

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