On December 1, Vidya Poddar heaved a big sigh of relief when Maharashtra Chief Minister Uddhav Thackeray ordered the withdrawal of cases registered against 29 persons, including her son, who had staged a protest at the Aarey Milk Colony in Mumbai in October. This was not the only win for citizens fighting to protect Aarey, known as the “green lungs” of the city, where a metro car shed was proposed to be built in place of several hundred trees. The Chief Minister also announced that he was stopping all work on the metro car shed project. Since then, the State government has set up a four-member committee to look for an alternative site for the car shed. The committee conducted its first site visits on December 17 and is expected to submit its report in 15 days.
But while the activists have some cause to cheer, Uddhav Thackeray’s announcement raised concerns about further delay in the project, which will severely inconvenience the city’s commuters. Banking on this argument, the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) has been questioning the decision to review the car shed with former Chief Minister Devendra Fadnavis , whose previous government had pushed for the project to be completed, leading the attack. Former BJP MP Kirit Somaiya visited the car shed site on December 5 and said that construction should proceed as no more trees are required to be cut. Subsequently, the Chief Minister clarified that work on Metro Line 3 has not been stopped; that the stay was only for the work on the car shed .
Impact of delay
All the same, the decision to stay the work on the car shed may have an impact on the timeline and cost of the project. According to the implementing agency of Metro Line 3, the Mumbai Metro Rail Corporation Limited (MMRCL), a delay of one day increases the cost of the project by ₹4.23 crore. While work on the car shed has been stayed, other works such as tunnelling and station development have been progressing.
MMRCL is also under pressure as the first trains are expected to arrive by November 2020. With no car shed, the trains have no place to be parked. The Metro Line 3 corridor is expected to cost ₹23,136 crore, of which the Japanese International Cooperation Agency will provide ₹13,325 crore as loan.
During the course of the legal battle, a plot in Kanjurmarg was discussed as a feasible option as it would also serve another metro corridor, Metro Line 6. Recently, NCP leader Nawab Malik also suggested a plot in Jogeshwari East, which is with the State Reserve Police Force. However, both plots will involve extending the metro line either to the east or the west and thus escalate the cost and time taken for completion. In an event organised by SNDT University in September, the MD of MMRCL, Ashwini Bhide, had said that it would take roughly two years to develop a car shed after they received the land.
The battle over the car shed site had been a point of friction with the former government, which, through the MMRCL, went on an overdrive to put forth its side of the story. In addition to putting up a section on its website called ‘Facts of Aarey’, it also published full page ads in September in all the leading newspapers of the city. On its website, MMRCL states that it had considered several alternatives to the plot in Aarey but ruled all of them out on the basis of inadequate land area, technical unsuitability, and environment, legal and regulatory constraints. It stated that it has planted over 20,000 trees in Sanjay Gandhi National Park. MMRCL has also repeatedly said that there is no wildlife at the site of the metro car shed and that Aarey is not a forest.
The beginning of the struggle
The agitation against the proposed car shed has brought to the fore the long-standing ‘development versus environment’ debate, capturing the imagination of a city which few other movements have been able to do. Thackeray’s announcement is the latest chapter in the five-year-long struggle to save Aarey.
Vidya Poddar’s son Divyang, 27, is pursuing a PhD at Mumbai University. He was among the 29 who had been arrested from the hundreds who had gathered to protest on October 4 against the project. “So many of those arrested were 22-23-year-olds. They are not hardened criminals. Divyang’s resolve is equally strong now and we are supportive of him because we don’t see anything wrong with what is clearly a noble cause,” says Poddar.
The October 4 protest marked the climax of a citizen-led movement to stop the construction of the metro car shed that was planned on a 30-hectare plot in Aarey Milk Colony. Citizens were furious that there were plans to fell more than 2,000 trees in order to construct the shed.
It all began five years ago when the MMRCL pasted notices on trees inside Aarey Milk Colony. The notices meant that 2,298 trees were going to be cut and the corporation had invited objections to the same. What followed were a series of meetings at Aarey and demonstrations across the city. A human chain was formed on Marine Drive and several protesters hugged trees at the car shed site, à la Chipko movement. The movement also received the support of Thackeray’s son, Aaditya, as well as his political rival and cousin Raj Thackeray’s outfit, the Maharashtra Navnirman Sena, as early as 2015. The central demand of the protesters was to scrap the car shed for the underground metro corridor and relocate it elsewhere.
The Mumbai Tree Authority, the statutory body under the Brihanmumbai Municipal Corporation (BMC) responsible for approving removal of trees or branches in the city, did not give its assent in 2015 to the original proposal. At the time, the Tree Authority comprised only corporators. The Shiv Sena had a majority in the committee. In the same year, the State government, led by Fadnavis, appointed a technical committee consisting of the State’s senior-most bureaucrats to review the car shed’s location. In September of that year, the committee ruled that Aarey was the most suitable location for the car shed.
But by then, the National Green Tribunal (NGT) had ordered status quo to be maintained and prohibited any work inside Aarey Milk Colony. The NGT’s Pune Bench was hearing a petition, which has since become the cornerstone of the legal challenge to the car shed being planned at Aarey. In May 2015, NGOs Vanashakti and Aarey Conservation Group moved the NGT to declare Aarey colony a forest and an eco-sensitive zone. “Our fight was always for Aarey [where other projects have also been proposed]. The car shed issue served as a trigger for the battle because we realised that this was not going to stop. We never wanted to target MMRCL, but ultimately, the government managed to twist the narrative in such a way that it looked like all these petitions were only targeting the metro,” Stalin Dayanand of Vanashakti says.
A big blow to the movement
The petition, which was being heard by the Divisional Bench of NGT at Pune, was transferred to the Principal Bench in Delhi in January in 2018. In September 2018, the Principal Bench declared that it did not have the jurisdiction to declare Aarey as a forest and asked the petitioners to withdraw their petition and approach either the High Court or the Supreme Court.
Dayanand says that the judgment was the biggest blow to the movement. “We felt really betrayed. The movement had gone quiet because the NGT was hearing the matter. There were stay orders in force and the petitions were going strong. But with that judgment, all the protection disappeared,” he says.
The petitioners approached the Bombay High Court with the same petition. The High Court was simultaneously hearing other petitions to stop construction of the metro car shed which claimed that the location of the shed was problematic as it was the only remaining floodplain of the Mithi river. The Court dismissed all the cases and also vacated the stay on the cutting of trees. The petitioners have appealed against the High Court order in the Supreme Court.
While the High Court’s order was yet another blow to the protesters, Dayanand says the movement began to waver after the NGT order. A section of the old guard had got fatigued, he says, and the widespread notion was that there wasn’t much to do on the ground since the courts were hearing the matter. “But the movement regained its momentum when the Tree Authority started misbehaving. This time it was driven by the youth of the city,” he says.
After the NGT expressed its inability to declare Aarey colony a forest as demanded by activists, in September 2018 the Mumbai Tree Authority issued a notice inviting objections to the removal of 2,702 trees from the site for the car shed. A public hearing saw hundreds of people gathering at the Tree Authority’s office, bringing the issue back into the spotlight. In October 2018, environmentalist Zoru Bhathena moved the Bombay High Court challenging the very composition of the Tree Authority as it did not have any experts, which was mandatory. The High Court prohibited the Tree Authority from issuing any permissions until it appointed experts. In April 2019, the Tree Authority finally got four experts on board and later added one more.
Jumping into the fray
On August 29, the Tree Authority passed the proposal amid outrage. The number of trees to be removed was reduced to 2,646 — 2,185 trees were to be cut and 461 transplanted. More politicians jumped into the fray; the protests slowly turned into an election issue. While the BJP and the Nationalist Congress Party supported the proposal, along with two of the three nominated experts present on the occasion, the Congress staged a walkout. The Shiv Sena opposed the proposal in the meeting and also moved the court against the decision. The proposal, just ahead of the Maharashtra Assembly elections in October, brought heavy flak to the Tree Authority, especially because the experts voted in favour of cutting the trees. The two experts eventually resigned, only to withdraw their resignations later. Later, the BJP as well as municipal commissioner Praveen Pardeshi defended the Tree Authority’s decision on several public platforms. Shiv Sainiks made allegations of “monetary gains” against the NCP candidate Kaptan Malik as he voted in favour of the proposal; today the two parties are allies. NCP MP Supriya Sule even joined protesters when the trees were cut later, and senior Congress leaders slammed the BJP’s decision.
The Shiv Sena also came under fire for not being able to prevent the decision despite being an ally of the BJP in the previous government. In response, Aaditya Thackeray, issued several clarifications about how the Sena still opposed the felling of trees. Uddhav Thackeray also said before the elections that the Sena would deal with the matter strongly once it came to power. He appears to have kept his word.
The night the trees were cut
On October 4, at around 8 p.m., barely hours after the Bombay High Court had dismissed a petition challenging the Tree Authority’s permission, MMRCL began cutting the first lot of trees. “The worst thing they could have done was to cut the trees at night, the moment the High Court dismissed the petitions,” Dayanand says. As word of the tree cutting spread thick and fast on social media, hundreds of activists, students and citizens gathered at the site in a last-ditch attempt to save Aarey. “I had just returned from work when I found out that trees were being cut,” Siddharth Anbhavane, 27, recalls. “I rushed to the site with some of my friends. All we were doing was raising slogans and protesting, which is our right.”
The protesters laid siege to the car shed site. They broke through the gates to reach the site of the tree felling. With the situation escalating, a curfew was imposed at Aarey. It lasted for three days. Hundreds of protesters were forcibly evicted and detained. The protest went on until 2.30 a.m. on October 5, when the last batch of protesters were removed. “All of us were very anxious. We could relax only when our children stepped out of custody,” Poddar says.
Anbhavane, who spent two nights in custody, says the withdrawal of cases against the protesters only increased his resolve to work for the environment. “We were taken to different police stations and detained there all night. We spent another night in judicial custody. Yes, our families were very worried but everyone who goes to protest knows the consequences of it,” he says.
As news of the protests and arrests spread, a law student from Delhi, Rishav Ranjan, wrote a detailed letter to the Chief Justice of India. “My friends in Mumbai told me about the trees being cut and I drafted a letter to the CJI, mentioning how there was no time for a formal petition. Thankfully, the Supreme Court gave us a hearing,” says Ranjan. Despite it being a Sunday, the Supreme Court heard the matter and ordered a stay. “Even though the trees have been cut now, the letter has been converted into a PIL. We are fighting the matter on a number of other aspects to ensure we set the right precedent,” he says.
On October 7, after the curfew was removed, in its first statement after the tree cutting started, the MMRCL announced that 2,141 trees had been cut on site. The figure has been hotly disputed by environmental activists associated with the movement. “In my opinion, not more than 350 trees have been cut; the rest are still standing. We have asked the Supreme Court to give us permission to conduct a site inspection to ascertain how many trees have been cut,” Dayanand says.
Environmental concerns
Amrita Bhattacharjee of the Aarey Conservation Group says they wanted the metro car shed to be moved out of Aarey followed by other proposed projects like the zoo and the Metro Bhavan. “Two rivers, Mithi and Oshiwara, flow through Aarey and have a large portion of their catchment area there that prevents flooding. If Aarey is concretised, it will lead to large-scale flooding as our drains and rivers are not equipped to handle this much water,” she says.
Petitioners and activists say the car shed site is an integral part of the colony. A study published recently by researchers at the Kamla Raheja Vidyanidhi Institute for Architecture and Environmental Studies has said that the spate of infrastructure developments planned at Aarey Milk Colony will pose the threat of flooding in downstream areas of the Mithi river. Conducted over six months, the study looked at the geospatial transformations that have taken place since its inception and how the proposed projects and changes in land usage will affect the region and the city. “The consequences of the newly proposed projects on the catchment areas of the Mithi, an area where the streams that feed the river originate, is likely to exacerbate the risk of floods in downstream areas during and after construction of these projects,” it states.
Crucially the report also says that under the latest development plan for the city, only 800 hectares of the original 1,300 hectares will remain as a ‘Green Zone’ and not a No Development Zone. The key difference is that under a Green Zone, construction approved by the State government and the Ministry of Environment may be permitted. “This effectively leaves the door open for other unanticipated projects in the future, which will lead to the further shrinking of Aarey in an ad hoc and unplanned manner,” the report states.
“Eventually, we want Aarey to be declared a forest; tribals’ rights to be protected; and only the forest to thrive undisturbed,” Bhattacharjee says.
There seems to be no end to the people’s struggle to find a balance between conservation and development.
