PUNE: The defence estate office (DEO) here has given permission to the Pimpri Chinchwad Municipal Corporation to cut 502 full-grown trees along the Mula river in Khadki cantonment to make way for the construction of an approach route to Bopkhel bridge and develop allied infrastructure.
As per the defence ministry’s conditional nod to the construction of the bridge, PCMC is expected to build an underpass, a security watchtower, and other facilities around the bridge across the river that would link Bopkhel village to the old Pune-Mumbai highway in Dapodi.
PCMC needs 16,122sqm area for this purpose and had submitted moved a proposal for the cutting of trees to facilitate the construction.
“These trees stand close to the 512 Army Base Workshop. They were not planted. They grew on the bank of the river in the past few years,” a senior DEO official said.
“The Khadki station commander first gave the sanction for cutting of the trees. As a condition for this, PCMC has planted 60,000 trees in Training Battalion 2 of the Bombay Engineering Group centre over the past two years. Besides, the civic body has also deposited about Rs39 lakh of the cost of the trees with us. Now, its garden department will clean the area that is required for this work. As such there is no defence infrastructure in the area so no further clearance is required for this,” said a senior official from the DEO.
Srikant Savane, joint city engineer of PCMC, told TOI on Monday, “We have asked the appointed contractor to carry out the geotechnical investigation of the area. This exercise is crucial to understand the physical and chemical properties of the soil, which will help make recommendations for the foundation requirements, etc. It will soon be done at the site by a team of experts. Based on their report, we will start the work at the site,” said Savane.
“The construction work of the pillars and other aligned work of the bridge has been done from the Bopkhel village side so far. The remaining work will also commence in the coming days” he added.
