- Speaker plants trees in Garhi Cantt

By OUR STAFF REPORTER
DEHRADUN, 29 July: Speaker Harbans Kapoor and Minister Prakash Pant today planted Chinar tree saplings at the former's official residence. The Chinaar saplings are from J&K.
Speaking on the occasion, Speaker Kapoor said that tree plantation was the need of the hour. Kapoor said that the Chinar was usually found in hilly areas, but he planted them symbolically in Dehradun. He said that Chinars release huge amounts of oxygen which was good for health. He stated that Chinars also helped in increasing ground water levels as they used very little water to grow and conserved large amounts of water during monsoons.
Kapoor said that planting Chinars in a phased manner in Dehradun would help in ground water recharge and water conservation.
Earlier in the day, Kapoor and Prakash Pant had planted about 200 saplings of various types near Seven Oaks School in Garhi Cantt area. During the tree plantation programme, Pant said that ground water was decreasing by the day and if tree plantation was not done in time then it could result in a water crisis in the future. He said that in order to conserve environment, greenery and water in Uttarakhand, a large scale tree plantation drive was being carried out across the state.
Environmantalist Govind Joshi threw light on importance of tree plantation. Present at the tree plantation drive were BJP State Treasurer Vinay Goyal, city president Punit Mittal, corporator Deepa Shah, Santokh Nagpal, Surendra Kukreja, Sachin Gupta, CS Negi, Harish Arora, Savita Kapoor, Vinod Sharma, Sanjay Singhal, Ramesh Kala, Sharda Gupta, Rajkumar Tiwari, Vishal Aggarwal and many others.