Mumbaikars Fight To Save City's Last Green Patch Aarey Forest That's Being Cut Down For Metro Construction

The financial capital of India, Mumbai, is quickly turning into a concrete jungle. It is hard to find any gree patch in the sprawling city. While the debate between urbanisation and environment continues, the city is losing its greenery thick and fast. Now, in a bid to construct metro rail, the city may lose its last green patch, that is, Aarey Forest.

NGT had on September 20th reversed the 2015 order of the National Green Tribunal’s Pune bench ordering a status quo in Aarey Colony and stayed felling of trees, and levelling and dumping at the metro car shed site, the Tribunal’s principal bench in Delhi said that it is helpless and it does not have the jurisdiction to declare an area as a forest.

The NGT also asked the petitioners to approach the Bombay High Court for the purpose. Armed with the NGT order, which refused to declare Aarey as a natural forest, the MMRC has gone on a clearance spree in the past couple of days, cutting down hundreds of trees.

Environmentalist and activist who have been campaigning against the construction for years said they were shocked to see the manner in which MMRC has resorted to cutting down the trees.

"We were asked to withdraw our petition and approach the High Court to get Aarey declared as a natural forest. But before we could move the HC, MMRC has already began chopping down trees in Aarey. These are old trees, probably 70-80 years old, cut down in a matter of minutes," Stalin Dayanand, Director of Vanashakti NGO who has been leading the campaign said.?

"This is not even the trees which are located at the proposed site of the car shed but on the approach road. Tree felling for the car shed has not received clearance yet. Despite this they have gone ahead and cut down hundreds of trees in a week," Dayanand added.

Activists alleged that they were detained by police on Sunday for protesting the cutting of trees, which they said was not done according to the procedure.

"We were protesting as MMRCL or its contractor had been cutting trees in the absence of a tree officer. They produced permission to cut trees, but as per rules, cutting can only be done in the presence of a tree officer," Yash Marwah, an activist with Save Aarey said.

They were detained and released only after giving a written undertaking not to obstruct the construction.?However, MMRC officials said the trees were cut only after receiving the necessary approval from the tree authority.

According to environmentalists, the construction of the Metro-3 car shed would lead to destruction of 3,000 trees. MMRCL said the depot will be built on 25,000 sqm of land, even though it has 30,000 sq m in its possession.

"Aarey Colony is the last remaining green land. It is about 1200 hectares of natural forest, which is the only open space reaming in Mumbai today. It was always a part of Sanjay Gandhi National Park. But since the government did not notify it a forest, people have taken away chunks of it. The proposed car service centre is a polluting industry which the government want to set up in a place which has 5 lakhs trees and host of wildlife including seven resident leopards,"?Dayanand explained.

Concerned citizens have been taking to the streets and knocking on the doors of the judiciary against what they call as mindless cutting down of trees.?

"We had sought a window of two weeks to file our challenge. But in that time MMRC has gone ahead and are chopping away whatever trees they can see in Aarey. This is a mindless destruction. We have moved two petitions in the HC. There are other citizens who have also filed petitions. In total there are five cases related to Aarey in the HC now. We will wait for the court to decide, as the judiciary is our only hope. We are peace-loving people protesting in Gandhian ways. If we were throwing stones or burning buses, the government might have taken note," Dayanand said.

Reiterating that they are not against development or the Metro project Dayanand said the government has ignored seven alternative locations which were suggested for the construction of the project.?