Greens mourn Lalbagh deaths

Greens mourn Lalbagh deaths
TIMES NEWS NETWORK

Bangalore: Concerned citizens mourned the felling of trees in Lalbagh and elsewhere, by performing a shraadha in Lakshman Rau Park on Sunday.
Members of NGOs Sanmathi and Hasiru Usiru, who performed the ceremony, said shraaddha is symbolic of the collective callousness in failing to find alternatives which can let development happen evenwhile maintaining common spaces and urban greenery.
Women from Sanmathi performed the prakruthi homa in the morning, while others from Hasiru Usiru, local walkers associations and the general public stood around the site with placards and banners.
Vinay Sreenivasa, a member of Hasiru Usiru, said the decision last week of Justice N K Patil and Justice V Jagannathan, constituting the division bench of the state high court granting Bangalore Metro Rail Corporation Ltd. permission to fell trees in Lalbagh and Lakshman Rau boulevard after obtaining orders from the Tree Authority was very disappointing.
The citizen’s groups said the campaign was not about trees, it was also about accessing public spaces like parks and also about the fact that the decision making for the metro alignment had been most undemocratic with neither people’s opinions nor elected representatives opinions been taken into account.
Sreenivasa said the idea of the shraaddha was to communicate the citizen’s group’s resolve to push ahead with their demand for ‘Stop, Consult and Re-design.’ Dharma Somashekar of Sanmathi said they were not protesting against the Metro work, but it’s a wakeup call to save greenery and parks. Metro officials should go for alternative alignment