Mayor Ananta Narayan Jena plants a sapling at Sri Jagannath Udyan in Bhubaneswar on Sunday. Picture by Ashwinee Pati

Bhubaneswar, Aug. 1: A city-based organisation, in association with the Bhubaneswar Municipal Corporation (BMC), organised a plantation programme of phasi trees near the Central Reserve Police Force (CRPF) campus in the city today.

“The timber of phasi trees is used in building chariots of Lord Balabhadra, Lord Jagannath and Devi Subhadra during rath yatra. But we’ve observed that with depleting forest cover there has been a scarcity in the supply of the particular timber of late. We want to create awareness among the various stake holders and the state government. We will plant 400 phasi saplings each in five areas across the city. They will be collectively called as Sri Jagannath Udyan,” said Nrupesh Nayak, councillor and the man behind Green World Trust.

“The programme will be undertaken by the BMC and our trust in a public-private-partnership mode. We want people to plant phasi saplings (Anogeissus acuminate) even in their own land so that before the rath yatra they can donate them for building chariots. This year the state government honoured 49 people for donating timber,” he added.

Mayor Ananta Narayan Jena said: “Through the public-private-partnership mode we are planning to have more greenery around.”

Gadadhara Parida, the BMC commissioner, said: “We want more councillors to come forward and organise such plantation drives in their respective wards.”

Volunteers from Green World Trust said: “A phasi sapling takes around 10 years or more to grow to be used as timber. This species is mainly found in the riparian forest zones of Nayagarh, Khandapada and central Orissa. If people develop an interest to plant saplings on their own, then there would be no scarcity of timber in future.”

“Each year the three chariots need 1,135 big logs 400 cubic metres of timber. This year there has been an acute scarcity. So more phasi plantations are needed to have a continuous supply of the timber,” said the volunteers.