‘High-valued’ BKC plot was rejected for Metro-III carshed: NGOs

Times of India: Mumbai: Wednesday, 02 December 2015.

A barren plot of land in BKC owned by the Mumbai Metropolitan Region Development Authority (MMRDA) was rejected for Metro-III's carshed by a technical committee as "it has high real estate value".

In an affidavit before the National Green Tribunal, Pune bench, replying to the Mumbai Metro Rail Corporation Limited (MMRCL)'s etition seeking nod to take over 20.82 hectares of Aarey Colony for the carshed and to cut down 500 trees, NGOs Vanashakti and Aarey Conservation Group sought to highlight that the agency never seriously explored alternative sites.

MMRCL is executing the project for MMRDA. Pointing to contradictions, the affidavit states that the committee's report on various places talks of how an alternative design would take months to be prepared. Surprisingly, MMRCL already has an alternative design ready for Aarey. This plan was ready in 2012 "much before the public protests began", reads the affidavit. The opinions of environment experts from NEERI and IIT, who were members of the committee and have opposed the carshed at Aarey, were never reviewed.

"RTI replies clearly confirmed that no minutes of meeting were prepared and the entire activity of the Intervener Corporation was directed towards securing the reservation of Aarey as the only site in Mumbai for the project and hence, is completely arbitrary and illegal," states the affidavit. Pointing at its poor record of ensuring survival of transplanted trees, the affidavit states that lists of such trees in the last decade have not been provided under RTI.