Furnish hacking details, HC tells Tree Authority …………Shibu Thomas & Sukhada Tatke I TNN
Mumbai: The dwindling green cover in the city has come under the scanner of the Bombay high court. A division bench of Chief Justice Swatanter Kumar and Justice Dhanajay Chandrachud on Thursday asked the BMC’s Tree Authority (TA) to furnish details of the number of trees it had permitted to be cut in 2008-09. The TA has also been directed to inform the court about the number of fresh trees it has planted in the last one year.
The court’s directions came on a PIL by city NGO Aawaz, which claimed that the TA had been giving permissions indiscriminately to hack trees. “The authority has to approve a development project before the BMC can sanction it, but this is never done,’’ alleged advocate Jamshed Cama. The advocate also pointed out that of the budgetary allocation of Rs 23 crore for the year, the TA had hardly spent Rs 3 crore, leaving over Rs 19 crore unutilised.
The BMC’s tree census booklet—published last year—had pegged the number of trees in Mumbai at more than 19.17 lakh. The Tree Authority had even proudly proclaimed that Mumbai’s tree cover had increased by more than double since the last (1998) census but, according to experts, the figure includes 33,202 dead trees and 1.59 lakh subabhul trees, a foreign species known as weeds and invaders.
But even when the census was being conducted, environmentalists in the Tree Authority were sceptical of the parameters for classification of trees; most of them felt those parameters were being relaxed to inflate the total. In fact, members of the BMC’s tree committee feel that hardly anything is done to ensure that the city’s green cover is protected.
“It is the responsibility of the Tree Authority to protect trees. But it is rarely done. The question of plantation doesn’t even arise,’’ said Nilesh Baxi, honorary secretary of Society for Improvement, Greenery and Nature (Signature). “Even when the civic body claims to have transplanted trees, it is a big hoax. Officials hardly tend to the trees after they are transplanted. They should be given the same care as a newborn,’’ he added.
He validated the point by giving the example of 153 trees “transplanted’’ in Oval Maidan. “They were replacing the trees that were hacked at Marine Drive. But now, all of them are dead,’’ he said. Vijaykumar Dande, superintendent of gardens and tree officer said the BMC was in the process of collating the details. “The high court has asked us to give a detailed report and we are currently gathering information,’’ he said.