The Respiring Shankargarh Hills


The Vichar Vimash                                             



In today's era conservation of nature has became our top priority and a fundamental duty of every citizen as well as government.
So today we will talk about one such mountain which travelled a journey from being a mine to a city forest known as Shankargarh Hills and how a childhood dream became reality.
Shankargarh Hills is located in Dewas district near Indore, Madhya Pradesh. To know the story of this hill we have someone who was among the first to work for this cause, Mr. Samarjeet Singh Jadhavrao.

Mr. Samarjeet Singh Jadhavrao, Born and brought up in Dewas in a family with high values and traditions. studied engineering from Amity Noida, came back to Dewas and started his own IT company helping family business together. 

● So Samarjeet Tell us something about Shankargarh Hills and your connection with it ?


Me along with few friends used to go Shankargarh in middle school and was always fascinated about that hill and it’s natural beauty. Once we tried to gather all our friends together to form a plan to grow trees on Shankargarh, the  seed of thought to grow trees came at that time which was just in back of my head. When we were in college the Hill was mercilessly destroyed by mining Mafia and no one in Dewas was opposing it but one Social worker named Radharani Vajpaye felt the pain and she filed a case in NGT. God was with Shankargarh and NGT banned all mining activities on Shankargarh in 2015 but then also some mining activities were carried on illegally.


● What were the initial steps/plans towards the hills?


In 2016 me along with my two friend Ashutosh Chaturvedi and Nitesh Bansal went to Collector to discuss about Shankargarh and our interest to grow trees there. DM Ashutosh Awasthi was happy to have us and he motivated us to move forward and he shall help us if anything required. We bought seeds from Indore and every Sunday we used to go top of Hill and used to sow seeds, that time the pathway was not there, climbing Shankargarh was a tough job but the dream to make this Hill Green was a challenging drive which was thriving in all of us. 

For whole monsoon we used to spread thousands of seeds on hill hoping they all will grow as trees. But it was a dream which was very far from our catch. The small trees which came out of seeds can’t survive the summer on hill where water and soil both are in scarce, growing trees there was very tough. We tried planting big trees. The survival of trees also was not easy, we learnt ourselves that few native varieties of trees and seeds were surviving so we focused on those.   
We then thought to get more people for the cause do we involved rotary club firstly and then few news started coming about Shankargarh and people started getting aware about the cause.


● It looks like a tedious work, definitely it must have required many efforts.
So did you got any support from government?


This is a story of a mining land saved and converted to forest by public and government officials together. In 2019 we got call from ranger Jayveer Singh that forest department wish to do a Plantation drive on Shankargarh it was a good news for us , with all enthusiasm we gathered hundreds of people to join us for the event , the event was successful and it was reported to DFO shri. PN Mishra, with curiosity DFO Mishra Sir came all of a sudden on Sunday morning to see the Hill, me and Ashutosh were already present there for our Sunday activities. We met DFO sir and showed him all the work we were doing, he was a men with great vision and seems god has chosen him to help us for Shankargarh. From that Day DFO PN Mishra and us were one team to save Shankargarh.

That time Collector was Dr. Shrikant Pande , we tried convincing him to work for Shankargarh but he got transferred soon, it was in 2021 when Collector Chandramoli Shukla Came to Dewas and DFO convinced him about the importance of this project. He was convinced and whole Dewas Administration which was once interested in mining on Shankargarh geared up this time for good cause to make Shankargarh Green again. 

We felt we won our battle, now the most powerful authority of district i.e. Collector , DFO, Commissioner were having the same dream to make Shankargarh A forest. 

Every day something new was getting developed, from thousands of trees, Trenches, lakes formation, landscaping, everything was changing very fast. Also now every other person in Dewas was talking about Shankargarh, people started going there for picnic with families which was something very big for us as there was a time we used to see only mining mafia or few notorious people there.

● What was the results of efforts taken by you all or what's the current status of the hills?


Now Shankargarh is selected as city forest by Central government among 75 city forest in Country on the occasion of 75thIndependence Day.  
Dfo PN Mishra has helped our dream came true , he  became the people’s DFO and always motivated us, he formed The Green Army Dewas a team of active Environmentalist who will stand and work for Shankargarh. 
Now this is a public movement. 



All the efforts taken by you all are appreciable and is a inspiration for all of us, what you all are doing is for the mankind and is also the need of hour. Thank you so much for sharing this inspiring story with us. May god bless Shankargarh with infinite years of blissfulness.


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