30 years of Tree Act: A tussle for green cover in Delhi

In the first weekof September, the Municipal Corporation of Delhi (MCD) was penalised ₹80,000 after the state forest department, during an inspection of neighbourhoods in Jangpura and Nizamuddin East, found eight trees choked around their roots due to the civic body concreting the mandatory space of one metre around the radius of the trunk that is mandated to be left free.
The forest department imposed the fine — ₹10,000 per tree — on MCD by invoking Section 8 of the Delhi Preservation of Trees Act (DPTA), 1994, on a complaint from a resident that trees in the southeast Delhi neighbourhoods were heavily concreted. The department also questioned why a ninth tree listed in the complaint could not be located on the ground and had gone “missing”.
This was just one example of the constructive use of DPTA, a law which many legal and environmental experts believe is revolutionary in terms of protecting each individual tree against offences such as illegal felling, pruning or concreting, and is one of the strongest green acts in the country.
However, the same experts feel that 30 years after DPTA came into being, the Capital has failed to develop a mechanism to identify trees that go “missing” or are cut in real-time. They also point out that no tangible step has been taken towards conducting a dedicated tree census, to identify missing trees.
Delhi’s green cover records an exponential growth
In 1994, Delhi’s green cover was a mere 22 square kilometres (sq km)—less than 1.5% of the city’s total geographical area. Recognising the urgency to protect the existing forests in the Capital, DPTA was notified on October 12 that year, in the hope that the law would not only preserve the environment but also help expand its tree belt.
In the three decades since, Delhi’s tree count has grown exponentially—the latest edition of the India State of Forest Report (ISFR) from 2021 showed Delhi’s green cover was at 342 sq km, which is 23.06% of the city’s geographical area.
Much of this is down to DPTA. The Act defines tree officers — officials who act on the basis of tree-related violations — and lays out penalties for different offences: ₹10,000 per concretised tree, ₹20,000 per tree illegally pruned, ₹60,000 per tree illegally felled, etc. These fines can be compounded, making it mandatory for the agency in question to take permission to remove even the branches of an individual tree.
The Act also introduced the concept of compensatory plantation, making it mandatory for 10 saplings to be planted in Delhi for each tree felled. A senior forest department official said it is this provision that has played a key role in increasing Delhi’s green cover over the last three decades.
“DPTA also allows action against any tree-related violence to be executed swiftly, but before the Act was introduced, action would be taken under the CrPC and that too, rarely,” said the official, declining to be named.
Officials said the green cover has also grown due to aggressive plantation drives in recent years.
For example, the Delhi government has set a target of planting 6.4 million saplings in Delhi this year, after the previous year’s target of 5.2 million was met by December 2023.
Lack of tree census a shortcoming
A year after the Act came into being, in 1995, a full-fledged autonomous body – the Delhi Tree Authority (DTA) — was formed to execute various sections of DPTA, which includes protection of trees, conducting studies on the number of trees to be felled for infrastructure projects, overseeing a tree census in the Capital, and ensuring de-concretisation of trees.
Though DPTA explicitly does not ask urban local bodies or the forest department to carry out a tree census, it is defined as one of the roles of DTA.
Experts say that the failure of DTA to meet regularly — the body has met only around 12 times since its inception, and last met in July this year, after a gap of eleven months — has dampened execution of DPTA to a large extent.
“The establishment of a tree authority and the requirement for official permission before tree felling were commendable and important steps to protect Delhi’s trees. However, the effectiveness of DPTA has been compromised by inadequate enforcement mechanisms. DTA is yet to conduct a tree census, and it rarely meets, thus not implementing a number of sections of the act that it otherwise could and should,” said environmentalist Bhavreen Kandhari.
“Until we know how many trees exist in an area, we cannot effectively identify which trees have gone missing over a period of time. At the same time, ground-level monitoring to keep a tab on the felling of trees remains missing,” she said.
In the absence of a tree census, citizens have largely taken it upon themselves to conduct one at the neighbourhood-level.
In 2011, environmentalist Padmavati Dwivedi led a tree census at Sarvodaya Enclave in south Delhi, counting 787 trees in the neighbourhood. Of these, 354 were lopping (tilted) towards one side, and another 293 were completely choked by concrete. A second census in 2016-17, the results of which were declared in 2019, found that 77 trees had gone missing, after the count threw up only 731 trees — 21 trees had been planted in the neighbourhood in the inventing period.
Based on directions by the Delhi high court, the forest department then launched its own survey in the area in October 2021 and comparing the 2011 data with the 2019 findings, and discovered that the total number of “missing trees” was 143 — nearly double the figure previously believed.
Verhaen Khanna, founder of the New Delhi Nature Society (NDNS), said the forest department’s Sarvodaya Enclave survey shows that it has the capability to identify trees that go “missing”, but the lack of a tree census or surveillance is at the core of the problem.
“DPTA is so strong on paper that no branch of a tree can be removed without permission. However, poor execution of the Act is what is leading to trees being felled illegally,” said Khanna.
Need to weed out invasive species
Though DPTA is excellent at protecting each tree in the Capital, experts say it does not differentiate between native species and exotics — which can be a problem when the exotic tree in question is an invasive species.
Sumit Dookia, assistant professor at Delhi’s Guru Gobind Singh Indraprastha University (GGSIPU) and part of Delhi’s Biodiversity Council (DBC), said the vilayati kikar (Prosopis juliflora) is both an exotic and invasive species, currently dominating most parts of the Ridge, but enjoys equal protection as a native tree such as arjun.
“Over the years, a need has been felt to particularly define exotic species and possibly define mechanisms in which they can be systematically removed,” said Dookia, stating it was important to promote native species and protect Delhi’s biodiversity that way.
Faiyaz Khudsar, who heads DDA’s biodiversity parks programme, shares similar views.
“We cannot remove invasive trees completely, but if removed in a phased manner, it will only benefit the area. There needs to be a section which paves the way and defines how and what should be done for an invasive tree,” he said.
The way forward
Earlier this year, between March and June, DDA allegedly axed over 1,000 trees in a reserve forest in the southern Ridge. The act, carried out without the forest department’s permission, came to light only when an activist, Bindu Kapurea filed a plea in the Delhi high court.
The matter is currently being heard in the Supreme Court, but to prevent such acts in future, the forest department in August said it is looking to geo-tag trees and create a 3D map of the city’s geographical areas to track changes in Delhi’s green cover and identify possible missing trees.
Environmental lawyer Aditya N Prasad said though DPTA provides the legal framework to protect each tree, the absence of staff and adequate infrastructure makes implementation difficult. “A handful of tree officers — one for each of the four forest divisions — can hardly be called a forestry force,” he said.
Khanna pointed to the Delhi government’s tree helpline — 1800118600 — and said that ordinary citizens can help further strengthen the Act.
“With DPTA completing 30 years, it is important that not only are people made aware of the powers they have and the action they can take through the Act, but the government needs to share its helpline number as widely as possible too. Even when people notice tree-related offences, they seldom know whom to approach or how to highlight the offence. This is not a problem of DPTA, but the forest department,” said Khanna, who regularly files complaints on the helpline.