Noida: Residents of Exotica Fresco come forward to safeguard saplings
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Noida: Residents of Exotica Fresco come forward to safeguard saplings

These were planted to welcome UP Chief Minister Yogi Adityanath to inaugurate Aqua Line of metro services three months ago, but were never taken care of.

Noida: Residents of Exotica Fresco come forward to safeguard saplings

In most of the high-profile inauguration ceremonies, planting of saplings has become a norm. But once the event is over not much care is given to these saplings, making most of them either wilt or die soon after.

This is what happening with the saplings, which were planted to welcome UP Chief Minister Yogi Adityanath in Noida’s Sector 137 three months ago to inaugurate Aqua Line of Noida and Greater Noida Metro service.

But in a welcome gesture, a group of residents of Exotica Fresco – a high-rise apartment in Sector 137 – have taken upon themselves to take care of these dying saplings. The group, which mainly consists of corporate professionals from various fields, has vowed to regularly water the saplings till the arrival of monsoon in the city.

The group of seven includes Pramod Taragi and Mohit Singla (IT professionals), Somesh Agarwal (law practitioner), Abhishek Singh (media professional) Naveen Kumar (pharmaceutical professional), Krit Mohan (embassy employee) and Varun (sales executive).

One common motive of the group is to help increase the green cover around their society. Speaking to City Spidey, Mohit said, “Currently, this area looks like a concrete forest as there aren't many trees around. We want to do our share of responsibility to help increase green cover in the area."

These residents daily fetch water from their society to water these plants. They said that out of 150 saplings that were planted a day before the arrival of the chief minister on January 26, 2019, maximum have died. Only about 50 saplings are in a condition to be saved.  

“These saplings could have been saved if the officials had watered them regularly. But they did not turn up to see them again after the inaugural function,” said Pramod. “It looked like the officials from Noida Development Authority were in a hurry as they removed all the saplings, which were voluntarily planted by residents of the area a few months ago and replaced them with new ones. They planted news ones just for the CM visit and once that got over, they never bothered to look after them.”

The group urged the officials to install fencing in the area to save the remaining saplings from stray animals. 

When we tried to contact SK Gupta, DGM, Horticulture (Noida Development Authority), our calls went unanswered.