Aarey has no dense green cover: MMRCL

Justification for car shed

The Mumbai Metro Rail Corporation Ltd on Tuesday dubbed Aarey Colony as an already ‘commercially exploited land’, which does not have any ‘dense tree cover.’

MMRCL made these submissions before the Bombay High Court while defending its decision to construct a car shed for the controversial Metro III line, which connects Colaba-Seepz-Bandra.

This comes in an affidavit filed by MMRCL through its chief project manager before a division bench of Justice Satyaranjan Dharmadhikari and Justice Prakash Naik.

In its affidavit, MMRCL said, “We deny that the land at Aarey Depot is a pristine area of land, that the entire plot has a dense tree cover, that it is a naturally forested area or that it is completely an uninhabited area.”

MMRCL cited a February 2016 affidavit of the Maharashtra government, wherein it denied any demarcation of Aarey Colony as forest land. “Apart from this, Aarey Colony was proposed to be included within the Eco Sensitive Zone of Sanjay Gandhi National Park.

The expert committee, constituted for declaration of ESZ, had however unanimously decided that 165 hectares of Aarey land would be used for the Metro car shed,” the affidavit reads.

To substantiate its claim of Aarey being an already commercially exploited land, MMRCL said that there are several stables and cattle sheds on the land apart from school buildings, police wireless stations, hospitals, godowns, salt breaking unit, factories, general stores and a Reliance Energy sub-station along with a ReadyMix Concrete manufacturing plant.

CONTD. ON P7