The Indian Express               07.12.2013

BMC plans gardens on ground beneath flyovers

To spruce up the King Circle flyover and the Lalbaug flyover on B R Ambedkar Road, BMC has invited an expression of interest (EoI) from NGOs and private parties to create and maintain gardens.

As per the tender conditions, the appointed private parties or voluntary organisations who take up the work as a corporate social responsibility scheme will have advertising rights in these spaces.

"The landscaping and beautification will be carried out in three months or as specified in work order. The maintenance period will be five years. The sponsor can display corporate logos of approved shape and size at approved locations. Advertisement of products will not be allowed. For every three sponsor logos, one MCGM logo shall be displayed at the sponsor's cost," read the tender conditions.

Deputy Municipal Commissioner (gardens department) S S Shinde said, "We will study the plans and designs that interested parties propose for beautification. We are not looking for anything elaborate as the space under these flyovers is less. The designs will involve plants that do not require a lot of

water and can grow in shade."

In 2012, the MMRDA issued a similar EoI for maintaining the belies of various flyovers it had constructed in the city. The authority, however, failed to receive good response. As these have now been handed over to BMC for maintenance, the corporation has re-initiated the EoI.

Based on the response, additional municipal commissioner SVR Srinivas said the BMC would expand the scope for beautification of other flyovers across Mumbai.

"This is part of our plan of revamping bridges. It includes structurally auditing all bridges and flyovers, strengthening weak ones and beautifying the spaces beneath. We are getting responses to the EoI but it is to be ascertained if these are good-quality responses. If we don't get enough responses of sound quality, we will have to amend some of the conditions," Srinivas said.

In 2010, the state government, citing security hazards, issued a ban on using vacant spaces under flyovers for parking vehicles. Hearing a PIL challenging the decision, in 2012 a bench of the Bombay High Court observed parking under flyovers should be prohibited if the state government perceives it as a security threat.

"In some areas, we found that the space under flyovers is being used for legal temporary halt of intermediate transport — such as the space under Dadar TT flyover where buses are parked. In these areas we will not change the use of the space but wherever there is illegal parking or encroachments and it is a security threat, we will expand the scope for beautification," Srinivas said.

The Indian Express            03.12.2013

VMC may plant rare trees in Kamatibaug

If everything goes as planned, Vadodara Municipal Corporation (VMC) will consider planting some rare species of trees, which were once gifted to the city by Maharaja Sayajirao Gaekwad III, as part of the iconic Kamatibaug Garden. Some of these trees have been lost to the ravages of time. The VMC has approached the Botany department of the Maharaja Sayajirao University and the Anand Agricultural University to help identify these rare trees in the garden, and classify them into categories according to their chances of survival, so that similar trees can be planted again.

The experts are also helping VMC classify the trees and prepare a meticulous nomenclature for all the species available in the garden. According to a documented book on Sayajibaug, a total of 76 species of trees were found at Kamatibaug.

These include the Cuban Royal Palm, Sand Paper Plant, Devil's Tree, Egyptian Doum Palm, Flame of the Forest, Red Silk Cotton tree, Mast tree, Sandalwood tree, White Silk cotton tree, Flamboyant Flame tree, Torch tree, Persian lilac, Australian Bottle Brush, Travellers' Palm tree, Wild Almond, Screw Pine.

VMC Commissioner Manish Bharadwaj said, "These experts are helping us identify and classify rare trees at Kamatibaug garden. Students of the university have taken samples of the fruits of trees to make a correct estimation of what kind of species exist in Kamatibaug and which can survive the climatic changes. There may have been many more trees that were originally planted in the garden, but not all have survived the climatic conditions."