Over 1.3K trees to be affected for various infra projects in Mumbai

According to BMC’s proposals, in all 1,342 trees will be impacted, of which, 770 trees will be cut, 573 will face transplant for projects like metro rail projects, construction of a bridge at the western line and redevelopment project in Worli

The Brihanmumbai Municipal Corporation (BMC) has proposed to cut and transplant over 1,300 trees in the city for various infrastructure projects like metro, road projects, railway projects etc.

The proposals to hack the rest of the trees will be discussed at the next Tree Authority meeting in November. (HT PHOTO)

According to the proposals, in all 1,342 trees will be impacted, of which, 770 trees will be cut, 573 will face transplant for projects like metro rail projects, construction of a bridge at the western line and redevelopment project in Worli. Of this, a proposal to cut 485 trees and transplant 179 trees were passed on Tuesday and the remaining will be taken on the agenda next month.

Officials said that the highest 522 trees to be cut and transplanted are for Metro 4 (Wadala to Thane), Metro 3 and Metro 2B line, 307 for railway projects like construction of a bridge between Ram Mandir to Jogeshwari, construction of coaching line at Kurla terminus.

The proposals to hack the rest of the trees will be discussed at the next Tree Authority meeting in November. Further, three proposals for hacking more than 200 trees were not passed on Tuesday and will be sent to the state government.

This as on July 6, state government amended Maharashtra (Urban Areas) Preservation & Protection of Trees Act, 1975, under which, trees that are more than 50-years old will be given heritage status and chopping off more than 200 trees will require permission from the state-level committee.

However, corporators from Congress and Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) have alleged that the Tree Authority meeting is conducted in a hurry. Amin Kutti, Congress corporator said, “Everything happened very quickly, and we did not understand what proposals were passed and which were held.”

Abhijit Samant, a BJP corporator said, “We do not know how many proposals were passed and how many are held back. We should know about this as a member of Tree Authority, but the meeting got over very quickly.”

Harish Bhardinge another BJP corporator said, “The meeting was of 1 pm and I logged in at 1.05 when the meeting was over. This is not how it should be.”