Nagpur’s Crisis: Urban Green Guidelines Ignored for a Decade

thenewsdirt
9 hours ago
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A tree showing how Urban Green Guidelines are ignored for a Decade in Nagpur. — Urban Green Guidelines Ignored for a Decade

Nagpur, the largest city in the Vidarbha region, has witnessed widespread disregard for national and state urban green policies meant to protect roadside trees and preserve urban greenery.

Despite clear standards set out in India’s Urban Green Guidelines since 2014, data show that tree bases across hundreds of Nagpur streets have been systematically encased in cement or asphalt.

These violations have directly contributed to a sharp decline in citywide green cover. This article details the failures in Nagpur’s adherence to green norms, providing data from the guidelines’ inception to the present.

Standards Mandate Protection of Urban Greenery

India’s Urban Green Guidelines, issued by the Ministry of Urban Development (now MoHUA) in 2014, set out technical recommendations for preserving and expanding urban green spaces.

They specify a minimum of 1.25 metres by 1.25 metres of open soil around every tree in built environments, with permeable paving or grilles to allow rainwater and air to reach roots.

The guidelines further caution against the concretisation of tree bases during road and pavement construction, highlighting how such practices restrict soil aeration and water absorption.

The guidelines align with the Maharashtra (Urban Areas) Protection and Preservation of Trees Act, 1975, which requires cities to establish a Tree Authority, conduct a comprehensive tree census every five years, and protect existing trees during urban projects. Combined, these policies form the core framework for safeguarding city greenery.

Nagpur’s planning documents and master plan updates have consistently acknowledged these norms, including provisions for pervious surfaces and tree protection in detailed project reports for road and footpath upgrades.

However, national and state guidelines carry no statutory penalties for non-compliance. They rely on voluntary implementation by municipal authorities and oversight by bodies such as city Tree Authorities.

This gap between policy and enforcement has allowed repeated violations of green norms in Nagpur over the past decade.

Pattern of Concrete Encroachment Revealed by Surveys

The extent of Nagpur’s non-compliance has been documented through successive municipal surveys and High Court filings.

Data presented by Nagpur Municipal Corporation (NMC) in 2025 showed that 4,147 mature trees across the city’s 10 zones were surrounded by impermeable concrete or asphalt, restricting their access to essential soil, water, and air.

This figure reflected a significant increase from an earlier March 2025 survey that had counted 3,100 choked trees.

Nehru Nagar, Mangalwari, Dhantoli, and Laxmi Nagar zones recorded the highest numbers of affected trees, together accounting for over 2,000 cases.

The surveys found that during road widening and footpath construction, work crews poured concrete or laid bitumen up to and around tree trunks, directly violating guidelines specifying the need for open soil pits.

Photographs from civic inspections presented in Bombay High Court proceedings showed entire streets where trees were fully encased without any visible soil area, with concrete slabs extending up to or beyond tree trunks.

Court documents from Public Interest Litigation (PIL No.39/2024) filed by four Nagpur-based environmental activists revealed admissions by NMC that such concretisation was widespread.

The civic body stated that these practices occurred during multiple road redevelopment phases between 2016 and 2023.

In its official submissions to the High Court in June 2025, NMC acknowledged it had failed to implement the open soil requirements outlined in the Urban Green Guidelines.

The lack of compliance extended beyond isolated cases, affecting almost every major arterial road and footpath project undertaken by the city. Despite the guidelines’ explicit recommendation for protective railings or tree grilles around open pits to prevent future encroachment, Nagpur’s municipal records confirm that no such measures were incorporated in most projects during the period under review.

Consequences of Neglect and Legal Oversight

Nagpur’s disregard for green norms has had measurable impacts on its urban ecosystem. A 2018 Regional Remote Sensing Centre study showed that citywide green cover fell from 31% in 1999 to 21% by 2018, translating to a loss of nearly 4,000 hectares of vegetation. The study highlighted that the pace of green space reduction accelerated significantly after 2014, coinciding with road widening initiatives and new infrastructure projects that prioritised concrete surfaces over tree preservation.

The Tree Authority, mandated under the Maharashtra Trees Act, responsible for maintaining an inventory of urban trees, failed to conduct a complete census in the past decade.

RTI replies filed by activists revealed that the last comprehensive census report submitted to the state government was in 2013, violating the five-year interval requirement specified by law. Without updated records, the city has struggled to monitor its existing tree population or plan replantation efforts effectively.

Interviews with local environmental activists, including Sharad Patil, one of the petitioners in the PIL, confirmed that repeated complaints had been submitted to NMC from 2018 onwards.

Patil stated, “Our written objections about concretisation were ignored for years. Only after moving court did the authorities accept the scale of the problem.” Official statements by NMC in March 2025 admitted that engineers and contractors continued to pour concrete up to tree trunks despite internal orders to avoid it, reflecting a pattern of negligence.

In response to the High Court’s intervention, NMC’s garden department initiated a “tree de-choking” campaign starting in early 2025. The plan set a target of removing concrete from around at least 3,402 of the identified choked trees. As of June 2025, municipal progress reports confirmed that only 1,104 trees had been successfully de-choked, meaning over 75% of affected trees remained trapped. Monthly progress meetings were ordered by the court, but the pace of work has remained slow.

Judicial orders required periodic compliance reports to be submitted by both NMC and the National Environmental Engineering Research Institute (NEERI), which is monitoring restoration efforts. NEERI experts are assessing soil conditions post-de-choking to determine whether prolonged concretisation has already caused irreversible damage to tree root systems. Early findings reported in court indicate that trees encased for over five years exhibit significant root rot and reduced canopy health.

Broader Implications for Vidarbha’s Urban Areas

While the PIL and associated data focus exclusively on Nagpur, the problem reflects a wider trend across Vidarbha’s expanding cities. Regional development plans reviewed by the Centre for Environmental Research and Education (CERE) have highlighted that road and footpath upgrades in nearby urban centres, including Amravati and Chandrapur, often ignore open-soil guidelines for roadside trees.

The consistent pattern of laying impervious surfaces up to tree trunks without leaving aerated pits points to systemic neglect of green policies.

Activists and urban ecologists argue that if Nagpur, the most resource-rich urban local body in Vidarbha, has not enforced Urban Green Guidelines, smaller municipalities are even less likely to comply.

The pattern in Nagpur serves as a detailed case study of how infrastructure-driven urban expansion in Vidarbha cities can come at the cost of tree health and long-term sustainability. It also highlights the risks of depending solely on policy guidelines without effective statutory enforcement mechanisms.

The High Court’s oversight has provided temporary momentum to Nagpur’s compliance efforts, but data show that a gap remains between policy and ground-level execution.

Replantation initiatives recently launched by NMC, involving thousands of saplings, have also raised concerns. Site visits by environmental groups found several saplings planted without proper pits or protective grilles, raising doubts about their survival.

Without consistent adherence to open-soil and aeration standards, experts warn that new plantings could face the same fate as older choked trees.

Despite these challenges, recent proceedings indicate that NMC has begun incorporating open soil pits into tender specifications for future footpath and road works. Official procurement documents published since April 2025 for upcoming road redevelopment projects include clauses requiring contractors to leave 1-metre square soil gaps around trees.

While this still falls short of the 1.25 metres prescribed by the 2014 guidelines, it marks a first documented effort by the city to align practices with national standards.

The present situation in Nagpur demonstrates how even acknowledged guidelines can remain ineffective without regular audits, clear accountability, and active enforcement by municipal authorities.

As of mid-2025, over three-quarters of choked trees remain unaddressed, with compliance progress moving at a pace unlikely to meet court-ordered targets before year-end. For now, Nagpur stands as a cautionary example of how urban development can undermine green goals when implementation of existing norms is neglected.