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To save Aarey, Kanjur metro depot plot essential: Petitioner
Stalin D, director of NGO Vanashakti and one of the spearheads of the Save Aarey movement, stressed on the need to establish the MVA’s proposed Integrated Metro Car Depot at Kanjurmarg in
Mumbai In a public address ‘Aarey 2022: Challenges & Way Ahead’, Stalin D, director of NGO Vanashakti and one of the spearheads of the Save Aarey movement, which led to the scrapping of the Metro-3 carshed in Aarey in 2019, stressed on the need to establish the Maharashtra Vikas Aghadi (MVA) government’s proposed Integrated Metro Car Depot at Kanjurmarg in order to ensure perpetual security for the recently notified Aarey forest.
“When two kings fight, the praja suffers. In this case, the kings are the Central and State governments which are locked in a dispute over the ownership of the Kanjur land, and the praja is the city of Mumbai and its residents who are being denied a valuable public service, and who are paying the cost for it with hundreds of crores of public money. Citizens need to petition the MVA government to use its powers to the fullest and acquire the land and urge the central government as well to hand it over, so they can wear the badge of having satisfied the demand of Mumbai’s citizens,” said Stalin, in his first such public address since the Save Aarey protests of October 2019, in which 29 activists were arrested for protesting the felling of trees in 2019.
Stalin D also emphasised the need to bring all 1,260 acres of Aarey Colony under the ambit of the Indian Forest Act (1927), but cautioned citizens and activists that to do so in one fell swoop would be counter-productive. With an estimated 40,000 residents (including slum dwellers and tribal residents) living inside the colony, such a move would lead to a conflict of claims over various portions of the area, and may also hurt the customary rights of the adivasis, who stand to be clubbed in with encroachers in a bid to expedite the forest settlement process.
“Hundreds of cases will pile up before the courts and the entire process will be delayed, during which time the already immense anthropogenic stressors on Aarey will continue to damage the ecology. At present, we have got 800 acres of forest, which was unthinkable in a city like Mumbai. The rest has to happen of course, but the demand for it to happen immediately will have adverse implications,” Stalin said, attempting to counter a position that has recently gathered steam among members of the Aarey Conservation Group, an umbrella term referring to various civil society organisations.
In the final analysis, Stalin explained that the Aarey conflict remains a matter of active concern even today, despite the MVA government’s demonstrated intention to protect Aarey as a legal forest. “Governments are subject to change, and even declared forests can be diverted as happens every day across the country. What we ultimately want is to put the Aarey matter to rest and focus on conservation, but that is not yet possible. We have to remain vigilant to keep the carshed out of the forest,” he added.
