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A group of youth called Team ‘Neralu Neravu’ launched their “Namma Mane, Namma Mara” by planting saplings behind the house of a businessman at Chitpady here on Thursday.

Members of Team ‘Neralu Neravu’ planting a sapling marking the launch of Namma Mane, Namma Mara scheme at Srinivas Nagar in Udupi on Thursday.

The objective of the scheme is to encourage people to plant saplings and grow more trees to increase green cover in Udupi city and the district.

Anyone interested in getting a sapling planted is his/her house can give a call to Team Neralu Neravu on 9986220255. The team would visit the house and plant a sapling, free of cost.

The only condition is that the house-owner should water and protect the sapling for six months during the summer. The team would keep track of saplings planted. The team has taken the support of the Udupi Range Forest Office to get the saplings.

The team planted saplings behind the house of the businessman Chandramohan at Srinivas Nagar in Chitpady here, to mark the inauguration of the scheme.

Speaking on the occasion, Ramesh, Udupi Range Forest Officer, said that though the Forest Department had schemes to encourage people to plant saplings, they never got the necessary response because of lack of awareness.

Hence, when ‘Neralu Neravu’ approached him with their idea of encouraging people to plant saplings in their houses, he immediately backed it. “We will take up this scheme in a big manner next year,” he said.

A demand survey too would be conducted to know which saplings people liked to grow. This would help the department in cultivating and providing those saplings to the interested persons, Mr. Ramesh said.

Avinash Kamath, team leader, said that the team had got over 238 calls from people asking for saplings to be planted in their house from different parts of the district in the last couple of days. Besides Udupi district, the team also got calls from 14 other districts of the State. But the scheme was presently restricted only to Udupi district.

Some people had sent messages supporting the scheme. One person had written: “Planting a sapling is as good as building a place of worship.” Such messages had encouraged the team, he said.