Statue of unity: 4,830 trees to be cut down to widen road

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The private contractor has deployed JCB machines, trucks and a team of labourers to cut and transport the trees to a godown at Ashapura from where the forest department will auction them off after the work is completed. “As many as 1,117 trees stand on both sides of the road from Vadodara and a village called Hetampura, which falls under the jurisdiction of Vadodara RFO, while from there to Dabhoi, we have 3,713 trees. The work has started from Dabhoi and will go on till it touches Kapurai chokdi, the last point on the road touching the national highway that connects Vadodara to Surat,” said Dabhoi RFO CC Rohit.

Officials of the R&B department said the work of widening of this state highway was pending since long but has been expedited keeping in view the construction of the government’s ambitious 182-metre-tall Statue of Unity that is coming up at an islet on Narmada river near the Narmada dam. The statue will draw tourists from Ahmedabad and Vadodara, and this road will see heavy traffic. The Statue of Unity site will be around 60 kilometres from Dabhoi.