Sources in the State Forest Department today endorsed the figure of 98,000 trees disclosed to Civil Supplies Minister Jaspal Singh during the meeting he held last week with two senior forest officers in the minister's official chamber at the Secretariat. There are over three lakh trees standing on the land.

Reacting to a story in this morning's Express Newsline, K C Kapoor, ACS (Information Technology Department), said the precise number of trees to face the axe on the land could be known only after a land use plan for the project was ready. Initially, only 200 trees, all energy plants, will be chopped to construct a multi-storeyed building as part of Infocity.

Kapoor said the government was contemplating, as part of a plan to minimise the decimation of trees, to change the road alignment for main entry into the Infocity from the Funworld side on the Gandhinagar-Ahmedabad highway, instead of from the Indroda Circle side on the Gandhinagar-Sarkhej highway. ``The Chief Minister has directed those in charge of the project to minimise the number of trees to be cut", he added.

Kapoor said the government was prepared to extend adequate financial help to the forest department to grow compensatory forests in lieu of the trees to be cut on the 200 acres of land. "The forest department has spent about Rs 24 lakh on growing trees on the land under the World Bank-aided social forestry project. We are prepared to compensate five times more for the trees to be axed for the project", the official said.

A senior forest official, speaking on condition of anonymity, told Express Newsline that his department had received a proposal from the GIDC, the nodal agency implementing the infrastructure facility in Infocity, without any details about the precise number of trees to be cut. The proposal does not contain even a map of the site for the project, he said.