Queen’s Rd, Kasturba Rd part of Cubbon Park boundary

A July 1998 government notification that earmarked Queen’s Road and Kasturba Road as part of Cubbon Park boundary has given a new dimension to the elevated corridor debate: the trees that the project intends to remove are on the median of these roads, falling right inside the park boundary.

Rubbishing the report that the corridor will affect 120 park trees as ‘misinformation’, the Beku brigade had launched a counter campaign through multiple social media channels. Their contention was this: the trees lie on the median of the roads outside the park.

But the notification, issued on July 30, 1998, tells a different story. Specifying all lands and buildings within the limits of the park, it had defined the boundary on the north-east as ‘up to and along the Queen’s Road from Edward Statue Circle to Queen’s Statue Circle’.

The stress on ‘up to and along’ clearly shows that the park boundary is not limited to the Queen’s Road edge, but the entire road that includes its median.

The 1998 notification defining the Cubbon Park boundary.

On the south-east side, the boundary had this definition: “Along the Kasturba Road from Queen’s Statue Circle to Siddhalingaiah Circle up to and inclusive of CPC office aquarium and Cubbon Park Police Station up to and inclusive of VITM, Government Museum, and Venkatappa Art Gallery, then along the Kasturba Road from Siddalingaiah Circle to Hudson Circle.”

This notification was cited in a reference to the park boundary by the Karnataka high court in an order on August 13, 2001. The court had directed that no further constructions (other than referred to supra) be made within the limits of the park specified under the 1998 notification without obtaining its clearance.

The high court had also shared the concern of the petitioners ‘for the preservation of as much open space as possible and the need to develop the parks’.

Eco-assessment report

In its Environmental Impact Assessment Report on the elevated corridor project, the Karnataka Road Development Corporation Limited (KRDCL) had clearly indicated the number of trees that will be affected by the project in Cubbon Park and Kasturba Road. Under the head ‘Environmentally sensitive wooded stretches’, the report had a table (5-12) that showed 120 trees along an ‘impacted’ length of 876 metres in Cubbon Park and Kasturba Road.

As an introduction to this table, the report said: “There are a few identified environmentally sensitive thickly wooded stretches, which are affected by the project. These are mainly located along the north-south corridor, east-west corridors 1 and 2 as detailed in the following table.”