2,185 trees await the axe. To build a metro rail car shed in Mumbai, an area equivalent of 40 football fields will be denuded. The patch is part of a larger expanse whose survival could be tied to how the court rules on one question: is a swathe of green sheltered by 480,000 trees a forest?
Aarey Colony is 1,287 hectares—as big as 1,740 football fields—of a partially protected zone that, according to SPROUTS Environmental Trust, has more than 1,100 species of animals and plants. Mahua and haldu trees that grow up to 20 metres in height; 136 types of birds including hornbills, drongos and hoopoes; monitor lizards, cobras and vipers; and Indian civet and even leopards. Three years ago, a species of a new ground-dwelling gecko was found there, the first such discovery in 130 years.
All that would make it look like a forest. But it isn’t. Aarey is home to tribals, has a decades-old dairy complex, a hostel, a film studio, an apartment complex and more.
And less than 3 percent of its land, or 30 hectares, has been set aside to build the site to service, repair and house rail cars. That has left Mumbai cleaved.
Groups of people agitating against the approval to chop and transplant 416 trees on the patch have been branded anti-development, or plain hypocrites, for trying to stall a public transport project in one of the world’s most-crowded cities.
The Mumbai Metro authority issued newspaper advertisements to help the city tell “facts” from “myths”. Bollywood actors Amitabh Bachchan and Akshay Kumar came out in support, evoking backlash.
Ashwini Bhide, a Twitter-loving bureaucrat who heads the Mumbai Metro Rail Corporation Ltd., calls protesters ignorant. “The project is at such a stage that shifting the car depot just for the sake of it is not possible. That will hamper the project itself,” Bhide said. “People say we are not opposed to the metro but we are opposed to car depot. Without understanding you oppose the car depot. That means it's opposition to the metro itself.”
Environment activists, who moved the court on Aug. 29 against the controversial approval to cut trees, call for looking beyond the binary argument. They want the car shed for line 3 to be moved to Kanjurmarg, about 10 kilometres east, connecting it with the line 6 where another such shed is planned.
“Nobody is denying the benefits of Mumbai Metro but why should they come at the cost of trees? The argument that of more than 4 lakh trees in Aarey, they will axe only 3,000 is faulty,” Debi Goenka, an environmentalist, told BloombergQuint. “If you allow this, there will be no end to it and we will lose Aarey.”
The Bombay High Court will next hear the challenge against the Tree Authority’s approval on Sept. 30.
Can Car Shed Be Shifted?
Mumbai, ranked as the city with the world’s worst traffic congestion, is building the metro rail system to ease burden off its roads and existing suburban trains that ferry 75 lakh people every day. The metro is expected to carry 17 lakh passengers daily when fully operational.
“When we reach that target, 6.5 lakh vehicle trips are supposed to be off the road,” Bhide said. “There will be reduction in fuel consumption of 3.54 lakh litres per day.”
The Rs 23,000-crore line 3 mostly travels underground connecting Colaba in the south to industrial area of Seepz in the north on the edge of the national park. The selected location is 1.5 kilometres from Seepz.
“This is the most technically feasible, the most efficient site,” Bhide said, adding that a 2015 study showed there wasn’t an alternative. A delay in acquiring the land for a new site could cause the metro authority to miss the deadline of commissioning the phase one of line 3 by December 2021, she said. “A day’s delay will cost Rs 4.2 crore.”
Moreover, the land in Kanjurmarg, according to Bhide, is under litigation.
But Zoru Bathena, who has filed two petitions in the Bombay High Court to protect Aarey, said the suggested area has 1,300 acres, of which only 254 acres is under dispute, and the Line 6 depot is coming up on undisputed land. According to him, the metro authority can build the line 3 car shed near that.
Still, a change will come with its costs.
Mumbai Municipal Commissioner Praveen Pardeshi said at a corporation meeting it will take Rs 5,000 crore to acquire land in Kanjurmarg for a new shed, according to media reports. While he didn’t disclose how he got that number, property consultant Liases Foras estimates 30 hectares in Kanjurmarg will cost around Rs 3,200 crore at prevailing prices.
Godfrey Pimenta of Watchdog Foundation, an environment NGO, contests the figure. At the today’s ready-reckoner rates—benchmark for taxation—the cost of relocation to Kanjurmarg will be Rs 612 crore, he said. Ready-reckoner prices are at a discount to the market rates.
But Vivek Pai, member of Mumbai Mobility Forum, a think-tank working on transport solutions, admits that there will be a substantial cost in shifting the project. “If the car shed is moved to Kanjurmarg, the revenue model will change, and it will cost a sizeable amount,” he said. “That does not mean it cannot be done or the project could fail if not for the car shed in Aarey. Kanjurmarg is one alternative.”
Who Owns Aarey?
Aarey land was originally a forest that was acquired and given to the Diary Development Department in 1949, according to the government’s affidavit in the court and tribals living in the area. Now, it has handed 30 acres back for the car shed. The Forest Department has filed an affidavit in the court saying it’s not a forest, Bhide said.
Pimenta, however, said a forest is not defined only on the statute book. “You have to come and experience it. You have to come and see trees, birds, reptiles and leopards in Aarey. It’s their natural habitat.” In revenue records, he said, Aarey is still notified as ‘rakhiv 1’—a reserved forest.
Vanashakti, an NGO that works for environment, filed a petition seeking to declare Aarey a forest and the Bombay High Court has reserved the judgment.
What Makes Protesters Suspicious?
Environmentalists and protesters allege the insistence on Aarey is a ruse for opening the green area for property development. And they connect the dots between the change of land use two years ago, a plan to resettle slumdwellers in the area, and a condition in granting funding for line 3.
Located just outside the Sanjay Gandhi National Park, a protected forest, Aarey was a no-development zone till 2017. To pave the way for the car shed, the Devendra Fadnavis-led Maharashtra government modified the Mumbai Development Plan to classify Aarey as a green zone—allowing certain types of construction.
A petition unsuccessfully challenged the change in the Bombay Higher Court, and a special leave petition is pending in the Supreme Court.
Mumbai’s new development plan also provides 109 acres of land in Aarey for slum rehab.
If that kind of land is developed, 70,000 families, or 3 lakh people, will settle in Aarey, Pimenta said. “Imagine the kind of traffic and garbage Aarey will have to face. The government is trying to open land for development and, maybe in future, hand it over to builders.”
Metro line 3 is estimated to cost Rs 23,136 crore, with Japan International Cooperation Agency providing 57.2 percent and the central and state governments contributing the rest, according to the metro authority’s website. But the central funding comes with a condition that the corporation has to raise Rs 1,000 crore on its own. It plans to commercially develop land to meet that target.
Bhide, however, said the metro authority is not considering Aarey land. “We are looking for other options throughout the corridor where we can raise this money,” she said. “If it’s not possible, then of course it will be funded by the state. Right now, we are working to shortlist the land for such development.”
Considering this, Pankaj Joshi, executive director of the Urban Design Research Institute, the anxiety of people protesting to save the trees in Aarey is completely justified. “Why do they have to make it a public transport binary—that do you want metro or trees?” he asked. “They are already destroying our environment by opening up non-development zone, salt pans and reclaiming Coastal Regulation Zone areas.”
It’s not just environment activists, urban planners and tree lovers who are protesting. Tribals, the original inhabitants, too are angry.
Aarey is home to 27 hamlets with a population of 8,000 that relies on farming and related activities for a living. To make way for the car shed, 70 families were moved to nearby Chakla. They have filed a petition in alleging that the rehabilitation and resettlement process of the metro authority is misconceived and illegal.
“We are not against the metro. We are only opposing the car shed in Aarey. It will destroy our livelihood,” Prakash Bhoir, a local leader, said over the phone. “Had we known that the dairy will make way for the film city, the apartment complex and what not, we would have never parted with our land,” he said. “The metro authority says they will chop 70-year-old trees and plant a sapling. How does this work? This is our world. We can't see its destruction.”
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