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As Aarey demonstrations spread to other cities, campaigners in Mumbai receive police notices
Mumbai: Even as the Save Aarey protests spread to other cities, Mumbai police on Sunday served notices under the Criminal Procedure Code (CrPC) to two Save Aarey organisers, namely Tabrez Sayed and Jayesh Bhise, who have been associated with the movement for several years
Mumbai: Even as the Save Aarey protests spread to other cities, Mumbai police on Sunday served notices under the Criminal Procedure Code (CrPC) to two Save Aarey organisers, namely Tabrez Sayed and Jayesh Bhise, who have been associated with the movement for several years. “This is actually the second such notice I am receiving since the Shinde government came to power,” Sayed said.
On Sunday, environment groups across the country held protests in solidarity with Mumbai’s Save Aarey campaigners, after the Shinde-Fadnavis government announced the return of the controversial Metro-3 carshed back to its proposed location in Aarey. Demonstrations of varying sizes were held in Mumbai, Nagpur, Hyderabad, Jammu, Chandigarh, Guwahati, Gurgaon, Adilabad, Agra, Gorakhpur, Lucknow, Varanasi, Greater Noida, Prayagraj and Patna.
Neelam Ahluwalia, a founding member of the Aravalli Bachao Citizens Movement in Gurgaon, which has been campaigning for several years to protect the fragile ecology of the Aravalli mountain range in and around Delhi-NCR, said, “The question of what is a forest and what is not a forest also lies at the heart of our struggle to bring the Aravallis under greater protection. At this time when we need to be guarding our forests and natural ecosystems fiercely, the latest move of the new Maharashtra government to bring back the metro car shed inside Aarey has made citizens across India extremely upset. The Aravalli Bachao group stands in solidarity with the tribals, the biodiversity and the wildlife of Mumbai’s sacred forest.”
Regarding the notices served in Mumbai, deputy commissioner of police (zone 12), Somnath Gharge, told PTI, “Leaders, chiefs of NGOs and people heading various groups have been approaching the police seeking permission to stage demonstrations. Hence, we issued notices under section 149 (unlawful assembly) of the CrPC just to warn them to maintain law and order.”
During the Devendra Fadnavis-led Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP)-Shiv Sena regime, the Sena was at odds with its ally over the construction of a depot in Aarey. Relocation of the car-shed from Aarey to Kanjurmarg was among the first decisions that the MVA had taken after coming to power in 2019.
Aaditya Thackeray has repeatedly said that the MVA government had shifted the car depot to Kanjurmarg and the land could be used to house composite depots for four metro railway routes -- III (Colaba to SEEPZ), IV (Wadala to Gaimukh), VI (Swami Samarth Nagar to Kanjurmarg) and XIV (Badlapur-Kanjurmarg). “Depots for four lines would have been at one place. This would have saved between ₹8,500 to ₹10,000 crore,” he said.
