One sapling at a time — that is the quiet pledge Union Agriculture Minister Shivraj Singh Chouhan is keeping, day after day. On Thursday, 5 November 2026, he planted a sapling at the Smart City Park in Bhopal, continuing his personal pौधरोपण (tree-planting) commitment under the #OnePlantADay campaign and urging citizens across the country to follow suit.

Chouhan's post asked followers to 'plant as many trees as possible and contribute to environmental protection,' and directed them to join the drive either through a dedicated website or by giving a missed call to 8929629475 to become a 'Vriksh Mitra' — a 'Friend of Trees.'

Smart City Park and the Bhopal green-space push

The Smart City Park in Bhopal was developed under India's Smart Cities Mission, which sought to upgrade urban infrastructure and public spaces in 100 cities across the country. Choosing it as the venue for today's planting is deliberate signalling: green cover and smart urban design belong in the same sentence.

Bhopal, as the capital of Madhya Pradesh, carries a particular resonance for Chouhan. As a four-term Chief Minister of the state, he ran large-scale plantation drives, including the 2017 'Ek Ped, Ek Zindagi' ('One Tree, One Life') campaign that mobilised volunteers across Madhya Pradesh. The current initiative is an extension of that personal legacy into his national role.

Vriksh Mitra: a missed-call route to mass participation

The Vriksh Mitra citizen-engagement model is built for reach. A missed call to 8929629475 costs nothing, works on any mobile connection, and registers the caller as a participant — a low-friction design that mirrors successful digital-inclusion drives in India's public health and welfare programmes.

The campaign aligns with national climate commitments under the National Action Plan on Climate Change, which sets targets to expand India's forest and tree cover as part of its carbon-sequestration strategy. Senior ministers publicly and repeatedly planting trees — and asking others to do the same — keeps afforestation visible as a civic duty rather than only a government project.

A daily discipline, not a photo op

The word pratidinam — daily — matters here. The post frames this not as a one-off event but as an ongoing personal resolve. That framing invites accountability: citizens can track whether the pledge is kept, and the campaign architecture (website sign-ups, missed calls, a hashtag) is built to log participation at scale.

Whether the missed-call numbers translate into ground-level plantings will be the real measure — and that data, when it comes, will tell the fuller story of #OnePlantADay.