Mangaluru: An old weathered tree with its root degenerated is on the verge of collapse, posing threat to life and property, near Cordel Hall, Kulshekar. A Banyan tree with its branches spread luxuriously around a hundred feet is truly a lavish spectacle, till someone notices the sick and degenerated roots.

                                  Old weathered tree on the verge of collapse, posing threat to life and property

The tree may uproot anytime and even the thought of the same is causing worry to the local residents.

Thanks to nature, a huge branch of this tree had already fallen on the road side, a week ago, early in the morning, bringing down a portion of the compound wall of Kulushekar church. Luckily, there was no casualties reported as the branch had fallen across the empty auto stand around 100 feet from the tree.

A worried person from the commercial establishment near the Kulashekar, said though it was expected that this century old tree would fall any time, they were lucky that the huge branch of the tree had fallen early in the morning, when there was no movement of people.

Due to the fall of the huge branch from the banyan tree, electricity lines got snapped and since the Kulashekar Mescom office is situated right opposite to the tree, EB personnel must have informed the forest department. A person on conditions of anonymity said, normally the Mescom cuts off the trees in the name of pruning the branches, but in this case they have not.

When the issue was brought to the notice of Deputy Forest Officer Sridhar, he answered positively adding that the tree would be removed in 15 days.

The DFO also said, the department does not have funds to remove such trees that do not fetch any revenue to the department. Cutting and removing any such huge tree that does not fetch any revenue to the department involves quite some expense, for which there is no fund allocation from the government.

“But constantly the department receives information on such trees getting uprooted and we cannot ignore. Knowing the heavy rains in this district, and such climatic conditions, the government must come forward to allocate funds to be utilised in case of such incidents which are continuously happening,” he said.