753 trees set to be axed for infrastructure; send objections soon

The proposals have been made mainly for major infrastructure projects including the Mumbai Train Harbour Link (MTHL) at Sewri and the Kurla-Vakola elevated road at Vakola.

More than 1,600 trees are likely to be affected — 753 trees will be cut and 882 will be relocated — if not enough objections are raised by citizens before August 22 to multiple proposals put forward by the Brihanmumbai Municipal Corporation’s (BMC) garden department.

The civic body’s garden department has also put forward a proposal to cut down 62 dead and dangerous trees across the city. (HT image)

The proposals have been made mainly for major infrastructure projects including the Mumbai Train Harbour Link (MTHL) at Sewri and the Kurla-Vakola elevated road at Vakola.

The civic body’s garden department has also put forward a proposal to cut down 62 dead and dangerous trees across the city.

The proposal for MTHL was sent to the BMC by the Mumbai Metropolitan Region Development Authority (MMRDA) for approval from the civic body’s tree authority to ease connectivity.

The 10.38 km-long bridge is part of the MTHL package-1. There are currently 1,172 trees on site, of which 454 are to be cut and 550 are to be transplanted.

The proposal has been put forward by the BMC for public hearing on August 22.

The MMRDA has also sent another proposal to the BMC, which affects 631 trees at Vakola for the Kurla-Vakola elevated road to ease traffic in the suburbs.

There are a total of 925 trees on site, of which 299 are to be cut while 332 are to be transplanted. Public hearing for this proposal will also be held on August 22.

Both these projects are likely to affect a large number of trees and citizens can file their suggestions and objections to the BMC’s garden department regarding the same before August 22.

The public hearing for the same will be held on August 21 and objections must be sent before August 21.

Once the public hearing is complete, the suggestions and objections would be put forward to the tree authority headed by BMC commissioner Praveen Pardeshi.

The authority has 18 members, of which 13 are councillors from various parties and five are experts.

If the authority decides that there are too many objections, the proposal will be sent back to the authority concerned to recheck the proposal for tree cutting and reduce the number of affected trees.