Old trees along the national highways in Bastar region of Chhattisgarh may be chopped to minimise the number of fatal accidents.
Rising fatalities in the national highways owing to the drivers losing control and ramming on to the trees in the Bastar region have led the State Government to seriously consider the option of removing trees which may help bring down frequency of such mishaps.
More than a third of mishaps in the region had occurred due to overtaking of vehicles in which the driver had lost control leading to a large number of fatalities and injuries.
The State Government has issued directives to identify old trees along the routes such as Raipur-Jagdalpur ,Jagdalpur-Kondagaon, Kudalgaon to Bhetawada, Sonpal to Munjala and Ghotagaon to Joba whose removal could help being down the number of mishaps, it was learnt.
The maximum number of trees have been found along the highway between Jagdalpur to Kanker . A survey of trees along the highways in Bastar had been conducted earlier by the National Highways Authority of India (NHAI) which were to be removed to prevent accidents.
However, so far no decision had yet been taken to chop old trees along the highways which would also require mandatory permission of the Forest department and also the Union Ministry of Environment and Forests.