New Delhi, Aug 9 (IANS): The Delhi High Court on Monday issued a notice to the Public Works Department (PWD) and the Delhi Police on a petition regarding the damage that occurred to a tree in the Rohini area during road construction.

Seeking response of the authorities, including the PWD engineer-in-chief, executive engineers, the secretary and deputy commissioner of police, the station house officer, and the tree officer, justice Najmi Waziri issued the notice on a contempt petition filed by New Delhi Nature Society.

The bench checked the photos submitted by the petitioner and noted the concrete on the roots of a tree. The court came heavily on the officials on the matter, pointing out similar petitions.

Notably, the same bench had earlier expressed concerns over tree felling and destruction of greenery in the national capital, which is vulnerable to air pollution.

Earlier in June, expressing its anguish over the damages to the green cover in the national capital during the recent thunderstorm, the bench held the officials accountable for the lack of care which led to concretisation around trees that weakened their roots and caused heavy damage.

Justice Waziri also came down heavily on the authorities, saying the Public Works Department came and actually encroached up to the neck of these trees.

In another hearing also, he had stressed the importance of the trees.

"In this capital city with its ever-burgeoning population, the cacophony of voices and rampant commercialisation of every other street, robbing the residents of the familiar ambience of their residential neighbourhood, the ever-increasing motor-vehicular traffic, the choking air pollution and the ever-creeping concretisation, trees hold out as welcome and assuring living entities of hope, sanity, environmental redemption and even companionship. The more solitary the tree, the greater its significance," he had said.