Plan to plant holy trees in Gonda to prevent open defecation

LUCKNOW: After faring worst in the cleanliness ranking, Gonda administration has woken up to religious significance of trees and pledged to plant more instead of just depending on the sanitation staff.
On World Environment Day, the Gonda administration has decided to plant trees of religious importance like Bargad, Peepal, Tulsi, etc at places where people have been defecating in open.Gonda fared worst in the all India cleanliness, ranking 434th. Reacting to the cleanliness rating, the state government had pledged to make the state open defecation-free by October 2018.
June 5 happens to be World Environment Day and is coinciding with chief minister Aditya Nath Yogi’s 45th birthday. On the day, Gonda administration led by its CDO Divya Mittal would be carrying out plantation drive at 16 blocks of the districts. In all, 80 villages have been selected for the plantation drive, Mittal told TOI and added that five villages have been chosen from one block each.
These are villages where maximum number of toilets have come up but people are continuing to defecate in the open. Mittal said the saplings selected for plantation in 80 villages are mostly of religious importance or have medicinal value, like Peepal, Bargad, Paakad and Neem. On the day, the people would also be made aware of the religious importance of trees along with their medicinal value, said Mittal and added that as a pilot project, a total of 600 saplings would be planted on the day.
Given the religious sanctity of the trees, it is being presumed that people will avoid defecating at places where they are planted, an official of the Gonda administration said. On methods to monitor growth of saplings, Mittal said each sapling would have tree guard for physical protection besides, a ‘nigrani samiti’ (monitoring committee) would be formed to watch over the saplings and water them as and when needed.
Since most households in villages selected have toilets, villagers would be convinced to use them, said Mittal, adding that others would also be encouraged to get a toilet constructed with the help of Rs 12,000 aid as part of the Centre’s scheme on cleanliness.
If the scheme gets a good response, it would be extended to other villages, too, said Mittal.