HC dismisses AAP leader’s plea on Aarey tree-cutting

MUMBAI: The Bombay high court (HC) on Thursday dismissed a public interest litigation (PIL) filed by Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) office-bearer Priti Sharma Menon, challenging the cutting of trees at Aarey Colony in Goregaon for a Metro car shed, as premature.

The party’s national executive member sought a ban on the on-going cutting of trees at Aarey Colony, which she noticed when she drove past it on September 29.

Her lawyer, advocate Rakesh Kumar Singh, said a newspaper advertisement on September 26 called upon citizens to lodge objections and suggestions, if any, against the civic body’s proposal to cut 2,702 trees inside Aarey Colony, but the felling started even before the public hearing on October 10. Singh said the tree officer was bound to inspect the trees, which are permitted to be cut or removed, but no such inspection was carried out.

Advocate Kiran Bagalia, who represented the Mumbai Metro

Rail Corporation (MMRC), which will construct the Metro-3 car shed, said the Brihanmumbai Municipal Corporation’s (BMC) tree authority has already granted three different permissions allowing the Metro operator to cut 341 trees and transplant 152 others. So far, she said, the MMRC has cut only trees for which permissions have been granted. Apart from that, Bagalia said the MMRC has also not removed the trees required to be transplanted. She said the tree authority has imposed a condition on them to plant 22,900 new compensatory trees inside Aarey Colony.

The division bench of acting chief justice Naresh Patil and justice Girish Kulkarni disposed Menon’s PIL in view of this and a statement by Narayan Bubna, who represented BMC, that the tree authority has received a large number of objections to the proposal and a decision will be taken only after taking all of them into consideration.