Mumbai: The Thane Municipal Corporation (TMC) tree authority has received proposals to remove around 5,000 trees in Thane in the first two months of 2019. Many trees are slated to be sacrificed for road repair and construction work and infrastructure projects. However, citizens in Thane have protested such rampant felling of trees, stating that no public hearing for such proposals is organised by the TMC despite the Bombay high court order.
Activists said that while 5,000 trees were proposed to be axed in January and February 2019, the total number of trees affected by projects since 2017 had been more than 20,000.
“We have taken a total toll based on public notices issued by the TMC since last year. However, there has not been any single public hearing till now on the matter. This is an illegal process and we demand hearing for every objection,” said Rohit Joshi, a Thane-based tree activist.
On March 6, citizens and activists protested in front of the Tree Authority office at TMC. The group highlighted that the time allotted for submitting objections to any tree-cutting proposal should be increased to a minimum of 15 days. They also stated that the TMC did not provide specific details of the tree location in its public notices.
“Trees are being chopped for several purposes, including road widening, development of private and public properties, metro, flyovers, coastal roads etc. While the tree plantation drives have been carried out after every monsoon, their success rates remain an unexplored secret. The cumulative loss of such a large number of trees will affect the environment of Thane,” said Nishant Bangers, founder of Muse, a NGO that participated in the protest.
Meanwhile the TMC officials stated that the large number of tree cutting proposals is due to the earlier stay by the high court on the functioning of the tree authority. A TMC official said, “For almost six months, the TMC’s tree authority was not functioning due to the stay by the high court. These are the pending proposals since last year that we are looking into now.”
