Residents of Mumbai's Powai protest against proposed cutting through forested area

More than 500 residents submitted representations to the BMC on Friday, and more than 4,000 have signed letters that will be submitted in the coming days.

Residents of Powai’s Hiranandani township are up in arms against a proposed 13.4-metre Development Plan (DP) road that they fear will cut through the Pramod Mahajan Garden, an urban forest, resulting in the loss of trees and green cover. The road has been part of the DP since 2018 but residents said they became aware of the alignment only weeks ago, after BMC garden department officials visited the site to assess the trees that could be affected.

Powai Residents have opposed a 13.40 meter DP road saying it will affect the Pramod Mahajan Garden through which the road is to go. (Satish Bate/HT Photo)

More than 500 residents submitted representations to the BMC on Friday, and more than 4,000 have signed letters that will be submitted in the coming days, urging it to reconsider the alignment. Around 35 building societies in the township have also written to BMC.

Residents propose alternate road to avoid tree felling

Roughly eight metres of the proposed road will pass through the six-acre Pramod Mahajan Garden while the remaining stretch will pass through an adjoining plot owned by Supreme Infrastructure India Ltd, which is developing a commercial Global Capability Centre (GCC). “It is particularly troubling that the proposed alignment appears primarily to facilitate and benefit the adjoining commercial development,” residents said in their representation. They have sought alternative alignments that avoid the garden, its trees and vegetation.

Residents said the forest was not merely recreational space but also played an important role in absorbing rainwater. Shobha Philip, secretary of Lake Castle which abuts the forest, said the area’s natural gradient and surrounding hills allowed rainwater to percolate into the soil and contribute to groundwater recharge. “If a significant portion of this green area is lost to construction, water discharge will face an issue, particularly during heavy rain,” she said, adding that increased concretisation could worsen flooding.

Sunita Gohrani, 56, resident of Eden, who is associated with Save Forest, an initiative to protect the garden, said, “We signed up for a residential township, not a commercial one. If these roads are now needed for commerce, we must ask who benefits from them.”

BMC receives objections from residents

A total of 15,000 trees from 105 species, ranging from indigenous species to exotic varieties planted in the mid-1990s like Indian Oak, Mahogany, Flame of the Forest, and Baobab trees are part of this green heaven. It also hosts vibrant bird species such as the Eurasian Golden Oriole, Black Drongo, and Asian Koel.

A civic source said that BMC had earlier received representations from two residents objecting to the proposed road’s alignment on the grounds that it could affect the garden. Following the representations, BMC initiated an exercise to assess the potential impact of the proposed road, including the number of trees that could be affected. Garden department officials subsequently conducted an inventory of the trees at the site.

A BMC source, however, said that this exercise was undertaken in response to the representations, and not as part of any plan to construct the road. “The proposal has been around since 2018,” he said. “The survey was done to understand the impact of the proposed road on the garden.” He said preliminary inventory found around 122 trees at the site through which the proposed road is expected to pass.