More than two dozen full-grown trees have been felled at Nalban — a fishery project run and managed by the State Fisheries Development Corporation (SFDC).
The Nalban fisheries project is located off Sector V and a variety of fishes are farmed here and is on the border of the East Kolkata Wetlands, a designated Ramsar site.
There is a restaurant as well near the Sector V end of the fishery while the other end borders the Sukantanagar area.
The trees that have been felled were part of a periphery plantation on the Sukantanagr end.
A senior SFDC official said that every few years the water from the fishery is drained out, fresh soil is put in the banks of the fishery and its tertiary ponds where the fingerings are first released before the semi-adult fishes are released in the main waterbody.
After this step, a mix of lime and soil is layered onto the existing bed of all the waterbodies including the smaller ponds that are in turn connected with the main waterbody using a network of small channels.
Residents who live along the periphery of the Nalban fishery in Sukantanagar were the first to spot the felled trees which some of them said had been there since the time that they moved in.
Samar Bag, a fisherman employed at another fishery in the area who lives near Nalban, said that they found the trees lying on their sides.
An official of the state fisheries department said that they have hired an agency through the e-tender process for the job.
The state fisheries minister Biplab Roy Choudhury told The Telegraph Salt Lake that he has already ordered an inquiry into the incident.
“It seems that the trees had been felled sometime during February 16. Our initial inquiries have revealed that the agency that had been handed out the job had felled the trees somehow while working,” Choudhury said.
According to another senior SFDC official, the representatives from the agency had been called to their Bikash Bhavan headquarters to explain their actions.
“They told us that they were using earthmoving machines to scrape off the existing layer of mud from the bed and somehow the trees toppled over. We have warned them of action and have asked them to be more careful in the future,” said the official.
Minister Choudhury also said that for each tree that has been felled they would plant five trees, as is the norm.
However experts said that saplings take time to grow and as these trees were over two decades old it would take the saplings that much time to grow to that size.
Members of the Paschim Banga Vigyan Mancha also raised an alarm and went to the Bidhannagar South police station to lodge a complaint on Saturday. The cops however did not take their complaint.
“The police told us that they could not take our complaint as there is an existing FIR lodged by the SFDC. They instead advised us to visit the wetlands authority and seek their intervention. We are going to do it as we feel that a mere warning issued to an agency solves nothing. Those who felled the trees without any permits should be prosecuted under the laws of the land,” Basab Basak, the North 24-Parganas district president of the Mancha, told The Telegraph Salt Lake on Wednesday.
Mancha officials have also submitted letters to the East Kolkata Wetlands Authority and the state forest department.
Although the cops had refused to take their complaint on Saturday on Monday they received a letter from them.
“They took our complaint letter and handed us a copy that bore a seal which read “Received. Contents not verified”, Basak added.
An official from the East Kolkata Wetlands Authority said that they too were monitoring the developments at Nalban closely.