The Aarey Forest is home to around five lakh trees and a wide variety of animals and birds.
Around 800 acres of land in Mumbai Aarey, the focus of a bitter dispute in September and October last year between environmental activists and the then BJP-ruled Maharashtra government, which wanted to cut down 2,700 trees to build a shed for the Metro project. they have been declared a reserve forest, Chief Minister Uddhav Thackeray said on Sunday.
The proposed car shed, the Chief Minister said, would be moved to Kanjurmag, adding that there would be no escalation in cost because the state already owns land there.
“This uncertainty about the car shed is over,” Thackeray told reporters today, thanking his son and Environment Minister Aaditya Thackersay, who led the campaign to save Aarey’s trees, and officials from the Mumbai subway.
The Chief Minister also ordered the withdrawal of all police cases filed against the Aarey protesters, a measure that was also announced in December last year. The cases concern those filed against people who tried to prevent the authorities from cutting down the trees.
Aaditya Thackeray last month tweeted that the protesters had only defended the future of the planet. He also said that the rights of the Adivasi communities who call Aarey home would be protected.
Much controversy broke out last year over the decision of the then Maharashtra government to cut down trees in Aarey, a vast green swath with around five lakh of trees and home to a wide variety of animals and birds, to build a shed for the project. Metrorail. .
In October, the Bombay High Court refused to declare Aarey forest or overturn the Mumbai municipal corporation’s decision to allow logging. Hours later, under cover of night, bulldozers entered Aarey and trees were cut down in the middle of a dramatic confrontation with protesters.
In a series of tweets at the time, Aaditya Thackeray called the felling of trees a “disgraceful and disgusting” act that was carried out “under cover of night.”
The activists, including a group of law students, wrote to the then Chief Justice of India, Ranjan Gogoi, asking the Supreme Court to intervene.
The high court ordered a temporary suspension, but the Maharashtra government said it had already cut down the trees it needed. The court later clarified that it would not suspend construction of the car shed, on land that had already been cleared.
The Aarey protests became the bone of contention between the BJP and Shiv Sena (who was in power in the state as an ally of the BJP), and neither Uddhav Thackeray nor Aaditya Thackeray shied away from expressing their opposition to logging Aarey.
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