BJP, NCP team up to get 500 trees axed

Mumbai: The Shiv Sena, the ruling party in the Brihanmumbai Municipal Corporation (BMC), was made to eat humble pie, as it was defeated in a civic tree authority meeting on Thursday. Despite its fierce opposition, the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) joined hands with the Nationalist Congress Party (NCP) to approve proposals of transplantation and cutting of over 500 trees for various works.

The civic administration had tabled proposals, which involved transplantation and cutting of 308 and 203 trees respectively, before the tree authority for its approval. The works, for which tree cutting and transplantation was needed, included widening of couple of nullahs and construction of storage tanks for Hindustan Petroleum at Mahul.

While Sena opposed the proposals saying that they would lead to loss of tree cover in the city, BJP said they should be passed for city’s development.

In the 14-member tree authority, Sena and BJP have six and five members, whereas Congress and NCP have two and one member respectively. One Sena member and both the Congress members were absent in the meeting. So when the voting was done, Sena went into minority as BJP and NCP voted in favour of passing the proposals.

“Some of the proposals were already passed in the standing committee last year. So why Sena did not raise the issue of tree cutting then?” asked BJP group leader Manoj Kotak.

Sena group leader Yashwant Jadhav, however, said when the proposals were passed in the standing committee, there was no mention of cutting of trees.

“By passing the proposals, the BJP and NCP are causing great harm to the city’s environment,” said Mr Jadhav.