The Brihanmumbai Municipal Corporation’s (BMC) nod to axe thousands of trees in the Aarey Colony was received with strongly worded protests on Saturday.
The civic body’s Tree Authority had on Friday granted the Mumbai Metrorail Corporation Ltd. (MMRCL) permission to fell over 2,000 trees for the Metro 3 car shed, even as protestors gathered in the area yet again to save the trees.
On Saturday, the protestors reached Azad Maidan and raised slogans of ‘Aarey Bachao’.
Activist Zoru Bathena said, “The government is taking every step to ensure the Metro depot is built at Aarey, stream-rolling every opposition in its path. It is sad it doesn’t stop to listen.”
Harshad Tambe, another long-time protestor said, “If the thousands of emails and lakhs of requests through multiple platforms cannot change the government’s mind, it is pretty clear that it does not care about the common man’s demands.”
He also said the Aarey Conservation Group and Save Aarey pages on Facebook, which had been deactivated, were restored, after eight days, on Saturday.
“After the deactivation of the pages, Chief Miniter Devendra Fadnavis and MMRCL started spreading fake news about the Aarey conflict. The CM said Aarey is not a forest according to the Supreme Court, whereas that decision is still to be made by the National Green Tribunal. A dirty game is being played as posts supporting the Metro car-shed at Aarey are being uploaded from fake bot accounts and fake protestors were seen at MMRCL on Friday, who supported the metro car-shed and called us anti-nationals. When we spoke to them, they had no idea about the overall Aarey-Metro conflict,” he said.
According to the permission notice issued by the TA, of the total 2,185 trees that will go under the axe, 131 have already fallen and 23 have been declared dead. Further, 1,045 trees are supposed to be left untouched and retained as they are. The notice also says that no trees should be felled until 15 days from the day of permission.
The civic body has also directed the MMRCL to plant 13,110 trees within 30 days and intimate the concerned officers about the action taken. The MMRCL has been directed to submit an undertaking about taking good care of the trees and report about it on a regular basis every six months for three years.
