No nod to fell park trees, say forest dept and KMC
Times of India | 18 November 2025
Kolkata: No formal permission appears to have been granted by the forest department to fell trees at McPherson Square, also called Maharana Pratap Udyan, a public park at the intersection of Theatre Road and Loudon Street.
Three days after TOI highlighted destruction of greenery at the park, where nearly a dozen full-grown trees and several smaller trees were hacked to implement a beautification project funded by a private organisation, sources in forest department said no permission was sought by the KMC to hack trees at the park, nor was any permission given to any other agency.
KMC has been evading the question of whether they sought formal permission to cut down trees at the park.
A parks and squares department official said on Monday that the private agency engaged by a corporate house to beautify the park may have been allowed to relocate a couple of palm trees, but there was no permission to cut down full-grown trees or destroy greenery.
"We have not allowed the private agency to take its own decision to chop trees that was beyond the scope of beautification work. An order has been issued to probe into the matter and come up with a report.
Based on the findings, we will decide the next course of action. We repeatedly asked the agency to spare the greenery inside the park," said a KMC parks and gardens department official.
Even on Monday, the park resembled a construction site with masons and labourers working on an office for the nursery within the park. A payloader that was being used to flatten a portion of the park and scrape out the earth so that a concrete walkway could be finished was removed from sight.
Sections of tree trunks, including banyan and coconut, lay strewn across the park.
Pradeep Kakkar of PUBLIC, an NGO that focuses on preserving the city's environment and greenery, filed a complaint at Shakespeare Sarani police station on Nov 14, situated opposite the park. On Sunday, Nov 16, he again mailed the officer in charge, pointing out that no action was taken despite the work supervisor at the park being unable to furnish a forest department letter that allowed the cutting down of trees.
"Please urgently investigate and stop this destruction of the city's public property," said Kakkar, a co-founder of the NGO.