HC restrains BMC from felling trees for coastal road till Fri

MUMBAI: The Bombay high court on Wednesday restrained the Brihanmumbai Municipal Corporation from felling and transplanting 61 and 70 trees, respectively at Tata Garden at Bhulabhai Desai Road, based on the January 6 order of the BMC’S tree authority till Friday.

The permission was granted by the authority to make way for the coastal road interchange.

A division bench of justice S J Kathawalla and justice S P Tavade while hearing the petition filed by NGO Society of Improvement of Greenery was informed by advocate Ankit Kulkarni that it was not aware of the January 6 permission granted by the tree authority to fell 140 trees at Breach Candy for the coastal road.

He informed the court that while an earlier proposal involved fewer trees, it was opposed to the decision and wanted to challenge it.

However, senior advocate Aspi Chinoy and advocate Joel Carlos for the BMC and coastal road project opposed the submission of the NGO and said the order was uploaded on the civic administration’s website on January 19, and the NGO could not claim it had no knowledge of it to seek a stay.

Chinoy further submitted that when the NGO’S petition had come up for hearing in March and the BMC had mentioned about the decision in its affidavit, the NGO had not raised any objection against it.

Kulkarni, however, informed the court that the BMC served the affidavit on the NGO only on Wednesday morning hence it wanted time to challenge the decision.

After hearing the submissions, the bench restrained the BMC from going ahead with the felling till the NGO added the challenge to the authority’s order in its petition filed in March 2020 and posted the hearing on Friday.