India, July 4 -- After two people died, one of them a child, when trees collapsed on them in the last three days, the civic administration has ordered a week-long audit of trees across Mumbai to identify those at risk and to remove concrete choking their roots.

The directive follows numerous incidents of trees collapsing even as the monsoon only begins to get underway. The likely cause of these frequent tree collapses - now an annual occurrence - is the road concretisation drive entombing their roots, cutting off access to nourishment, and weakening them.

Municipal commissioner Ashwini Bhide has also told civic engineers and contractors to protect trees while carrying out future infrastructure work.

The directions come as the BMC under...