Sometimes the presence of Good Samaritans in people’s elected representatives gives us the hope that the administration is in good hands. One such incident happened in the state of Andhra Pradesh, near Vijayawada. An MLA of the ruling party TDP, has saved four old Bodhi trees from getting axed because of road widening.
Penamaluru MLA, Bode Prasad, has got to know from a news article that, 4 peepal trees were being cut down because of widening of the Vijayawada-Machilipatnam highway. The trees were getting axed for the widening of the roads. Thousands of trees along the 60 km stretch of the road have already been cut down. The four trees, rescued by the MLA, were also scheduled to get cut by the officials.He then stepped in to the scene and has taken the expense of translocating the trees near Bandar Canal Bunk, near Tadigadapa Bridge. He spent around one lakh rupees, to get the cranes, laborers, took help of locals and police and supervised the whole program to shift them overnight. They did the work at night, so as to not disturb the traffic at day and cause inconvenience to public.
Mr Prasad, the saviour of the trees, said that those trees had been around since his childhood, and he was saddened at the thought of them being cut down. He said that officials were not even thinking of alternatives to save trees, and were indiscriminately cutting them down. He said that peepul, banyan, Indian beech (Kanuga), and cluster fig trees (Juvvi) could grow even if only a small bit of the root system was left. Mr Prasad requested officials to approach the cutting down of trees for road expansions more sensitively.
