The Bandra woman who stopped road digging

Though relieved about halting the wreckage of the quaint lane, Natasha Pereira said concretisation had ruined the look and feel of many neighborhoods

Mumbai: A citizen activist’s persistent efforts and a Brihanmumbai Municipal Corporation (BMC) order barring fresh excavations, which was not in the public domain, helped foil attempts by the civic body to dig up and concretise a small alley off St Paul’s Road in Bandra West.

Natasha Pereira said Silver Clophill Lane is very narrow and gets flooded only two-three times a year when it rains very heavily (Satish Bate/ Hindustan Times)

“Silver Clophill Lane a charming road made of paver blocks that looks like a picture, with a garden at its end. It doesn’t need concretising,” said Bandra resident Natasha Pereira, whose foray into activism started with protests against deforestation in Aarey Colony for the metro car shed.

During her usual stroll on Tuesday morning, Pereira spotted BMC workers setting up barricades around Silver Clophill Lane and questioned them about what was going on. When she did not get any convincing answers, she called former corporator Asif Zakaria, who directed her to a BMC engineer. The engineer told her that work on storm water drains was about to start in area, followed by road concretisation.

Pereira was appalled because work on storm water drains along St Paul’s Road was undertaken just two years ago, when residents had to contend with relentless digging, noise and dust for over nine months. Moreover, Silver Clophill Lane was very narrow and hardly flooded only two-three times a year when it rained very heavily. She called activist Zoru Bhathena, who asked her to check with the engineer for drawings and plans of the impending work.

The BMC engineer sent Pereira some drawings of storm water drains which were generic in nature, mentioning standards for cross-sections of drains to be followed 2020 onwards. So she asked for drawings specific to Silver Clophill Lane and left the spot after being assured that work would not start in the interim.

But taking advantage of Pereira’s absence, the workers tried to get the JCB to work till a neighbour informed her.

“When I returned to the spot, it was noon, and Zoru had told me about a BMC order saying no new excavations would be permitted after February 22,” she said. The order, issued the same day by the deputy municipal commissioner but not publicised yet, said “...no new roads shall be excavated for concretisation after February 22, 2025.”

Pereira confronted the BMC engineer with the new information, but he feigned ignorance. “Either he didn’t know of the order or was just trying to bypass it. But he agreed not to continue with the digging,” she said.

Though relieved about halting the wreckage of the quaint lane, Pereira said concretisation had ruined the look and feel of many neighborhoods.

“So many trees are either being cut down or weakened at the roots. We don’t want this kind of development,” she said.

She was also critical of the BMC’s attempts at redoing gardens in Bandra, always for the worse. “Take the Bandstand Garden for instance, where I played when I was a child,” she reminisced. “Now, the garden is largely concretised, with hardly any shade for refuge from the sun.”