In a significant development, which is also a huge breather for environment activists and residents of Mumbai, Maharashtra chief minister Uddhav Thackeray on November 29, announced that the work on the upcoming Mumbai Metro car-shed at the Aarey Colony has been suspended.
"The work on the Mumbai Metro will continue unhindered. However, the work of the car-shed will be suspended until further orders. We will not allow even a leaf from Aarey Colony to be removed," he asserted.
Thackeray¡¯s new statement comes barely two months after the Mumbai Metro Rail Corporation Ltd (MMRCL) authorities chopped down 2,141 trees in a few hours, or coming to one tree per minute, shocking the people of the state.
Maharashtra¡¯s new chief minister was addressing a meeting organised by the Mantralaya Reporters Association, when he pointed out that he had become the first CM of the state from Mumbai, the country's commercial capital and would ensure that "not a single paise of public money" is misused or spent wrongly.
Reuters
This was his first day at work right after assuming office when he held an informal interaction with the journalist who cover the Mantralaya and Legislature.??
Thackeray said he still doesn¡¯t feel like a chief minister. ¡°It will take some time to sink in. I haven¡¯t seen the Vidhan Bhawan yet.¡±
Talking to the press, Uddhav Thackeray said that the CM post was unexpected. " I became CM unexpectedly, but I didn't want to run away from this responsibility," he said.
The Aarey Forest is located adjacent to Sanjay Gandhi National Park and has five lakh trees. In October, right after the Bombay High Court dismissed the petition filed by environmentalists to declare the area forest, MMRC began felling of trees leading to widespread agitation among residents and activists.
BCCL
According to environmentalists, MMRC jumped into action in the dead of the night and even before they could do something scores of trees had already been cut.
They also alleged that the Save Aarey campaigners were blocked and some of them even detained by the police at night for protesting against the felling of the trees.?
"They are using force against us who are protesting peacefully there. Some of our activists have been detained by the police at night. Right now it is a curfew-like situation there. All the entry points to Aarey have been cordoned off by the police. They are not even letting us within a radius of 3 kms of Aarey," Yash Marwa, a member of the Aarey Conservation Group said.
Close to 1200 trees were cut and by the time Supreme Court intervened, the damaged had already been done.