BMC to refrain from action on tree cutting proposals

Mumbai: The Brihanmumbai Municipal Corporation (BMC) will refrain from further approving or carrying out felling of 806 trees that have been mentioned in its public notices in January 2018, till the next hearing on February 21, the civic body told Bombay high court on Wednesday. 

The court was hearing a petition filed by Zoru Bhathena against the (Urban Areas) Protection & Preservation of Trees (Amendment) Act, 2016 that mentions that the Municipal Commissioner could sanction the cutting of 25 or less trees in the city. 

The petitioner contended that several trees for projects are being slaughtered as the developers divide tree cutting proposals into smaller ones to get easy permissions.

The public notices from last month only comprised of 49 proposals that summed up to 806 trees. Of these 42 proposals included 25 or less trees. 

“Some proposals were split into two just to get the Municipal Commissio-ner’s permission and to avoid going to the Tree Authority,” said Zoru Bhathena, petitioner and tree activist.

“An Slum Rehabilitation Authority (SRA) project for 29 trees was split into two proposals with 20 and 9 trees respectively. Metro project where thousands of trees are cut for one project, have proposals being broken up into small proposals of less than 25 trees,” added Mr. Bhathena.

Meanwhile the High Court also directed the BMC to give wide publicity to the tree cutting proposals and refrain from putting notices in lesser-known newspapers. 

The petition also pleaded the court to direct the civic body to issue e-notices of every tree cutting proposals on the BMC website. 

It also asserted that immediate action should be taken to prevent the tree cover at the road side from being depleted and to prevent the reduction in number of compensatory plantation.