Updated: October 12, 2020 10:59:19 am
MMRC begins work on the car depot for Metro 3 at Aarey Milk Colony in 2017. (Express Photo / File)
On Sunday, Maharashtra Chief Minister Uddhav Thackeray announced that the Shiv Sena-NCP-Congress government has decided to move the proposed shed for the Metro 3 underground railway. outside of Aarey. This has long been a contentious issue among environmental activists and the government.
Why has it been controversial?
The fight has been ongoing since 2014. While the 33.5 km underground Metro 3 is an ambitious project connecting Colaba-Bandra-SEEPZ, the location of the car shed was identified as Aarey: more than 1,800 acres of green space in the Goregaon suburbs. It is home to 290 wild species of flora and fauna, and is surrounded on many sides by concrete structures.
On October 4 last year, the Bombay High Court dismissed four petitions challenging the decision to cut down trees in Aarey. The petitioners had questioned the appropriateness and legality of the BMC Tree Authority permit and requested that Aarey be declared a floodplain and forest. Within hours of the court’s decision, the MMRCL (an SPV running the underground project) cut 2,135 trees in 24 hours. This led to activists and locals from Aarey taking to the streets to protest under the “Save Aarey” banner. The then BJP-led government (the Shiv Sena was part of it but opposed logging) invoked Section 144 in Aarey, which is home to some 10,000 people living in its 27 tribal villages, and deployed about 500 policemen. Twenty-nine protesters were arrested, but released on bail following instructions from the Supreme Court.
Activists argue that Aarey is an extension of Sanjay Gandhi National Park, and that the shed would pave the way for further commercial exploitation of the area.
Also in Explained | The fight for the Aarey colony of Mumbai
Mumbai has approximately 33 lakh trees in the city with 4.84 in the Aarey colony alone. (Express photo: Amit Chakravarty)
So what has the CM announced now?
Thackeray announced on Sunday that the government had decided to move the Aarey car shed to Kanjurmarg, an eastern suburb. He said the shed will be relocated to a government parcel of land for which the government will incur no additional costs, a claim that senior BJP leader Kirit Somaiya has objected to.
On September 1, Thackeray had said that the government would designate a 600-acre parcel of land in the heart of urban Mumbai as a reserve forest. On Sunday, he said the government had decided to expand the reserve forest in Aarey from 600 acres to 800 acres.
Third, he said the government would withdraw the criminal cases registered against the 29 protesters arrested last October.
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What does this mean politically for the Shiv Sena?
Even as an alliance partner in the former BJP-led government, Shiv Sena had opposed logging in Aarey with Yuva Sena’s leader Aaditya Thackeray at the helm. After bitterly parting ways with the BJP after the Assembly elections last November, Thackeray is now making a claim to prevail over his longtime ally Saffron. This is being seen as Thackeray further distanced Shiv Sena from the BJP by allowing the shed to be moved out of Aarey, a move that the previous Devendra Fadnavis government had fought for in court.
Aarey has long been a contentious topic among environmental activists and the government. (Photo / File Express)
On November 29 last year, a day after assuming the post of Chief Minister, Thackeray suspended construction work on the shed and ordered a review of the feasibility of relocating it elsewhere.
“Biodiversity in Aarey must be conserved and protected. Nowhere is there an 800-acre jungle in an urban setting. Mumbai has a natural forest cover. We know that jungles become cities, but here, a city becomes a jungle, ”Thackeray said in his online address to the state on Sunday.
He described his son Aaditya Thackeray, now Minister of the Environment, for having worked very hard for it and thanked his colleagues in the PNC Cabinet and Congress, Ajit Pawar and Balasaheb Thorat respectively, for their role in making this possible.
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