Aarey Colony not notified as forest land in any record: MMRCL to Bombay HC

The affidavit says that state government had, in its affidavit on February 17, 2016, filed before the NGT confirmed that “Aarey Colony has not been recognized and notified and / or identified and demarcated as ‘forest land’ in any record.”

3 min readMumbaiMar 21, 2018 04:59 AM IST First published on: Mar 21, 2018 at 04:59 AM IST

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Mumbai Metro. (Express Photo/Amit Chakravarty/File)

The Mumbai Metro Rail Corporation Limited (MMRCL) on Tuesday filed an affidavit in a public interest litigation that raised objections to setting up of the Metro car shed at Aarey. In the affidavit, the MMRCL said that according to the state government, “Aarey Colony has not been recognized, notified and/or identified and demarcated as ‘forest land’ in any record.” The final hearing is likely to begin on April 9. Bombay High Court was hearing a petition filed by Amrita Bhatacharjee and Biju Augustine, of the ‘Save Aarey’ initiative, challenging the notification of August 24, 2017, issued by the state government through the Urban Development Department (UDD) modifying the sanctioned revised development plan for Aarey by deleting 33 hectares of land from ‘no development zone’ and reserving it for a Metro car depot/workshop, and allied uses. In the affidavit, MMRCL denied that “the entire plot has dense tree cover” or that it is “a naturally forested area” or that it is completely uninhabited, as alleged by the petitioner.

The affidavit says that state government had, in its affidavit on February 17, 2016, filed before the NGT confirmed that “Aarey Colony has not been recognized and notified and / or identified and demarcated as ‘forest land’ in any record.” The affidavit says that the Aarey Milk Colony area was by a draft notification dated January 22, 2016 for the first time proposed to be included within the Eco Sensitive Zone of Sanjay Gandhi National Park (SGNP). The Expert Committee which had been constituted for declaration of Eco Sensitive Zone, had, however, unanimously decided that the area of 165 hectares of the Aarey land (which includes the land proposed to be allotted for the metro depot) should not be included within the Eco Sensitive Zone and accordingly the final notification dated December 5, 2016 did not include the 165 hectares of Aarey Milk Colony land in the notified Eco Sensitive Zone,” the affidavit, filed by Charuhas M Jadhav, the chief project manager, MMRCL stated.

The affidavit further says that the plot allotted for the Metro car depot is located at the southern end of Aarey Milk Colony. It is in the vicinity of the busy Jogeshwari-Vikhroli Link Road, the Marol-Maroshi Road and the Aarey-Powai Road. “The depot plot is not located in any core green area, nor is it completely covered with trees,” the affidavit states. The affidavit says that the allegation that the depot is sought to be located at the Aarey Milk Colony land as “the first of several steps to exploit Aarey Milk Colony commercially by eventually permitting residential or commercial buildings,” is both unwarranted and false.

“Metro station will serve as a very important multi-modal interchange point to service nearby densely populated areas of Powai, Andheri (E), Chandiwali, Vikhroli, Kanjurmarg, Jogeswari (E) and other localities. The detailed Project Report of Line-6 – the proposed Swami Samarth Nagar-JVLR-SPEEZ-Kanjurmarg-Vikhroli (EEH) corridor – prepared by Delhi Metro Rail Corporation (DMRC), provides for a station at SPEEZ village to provide an interchange with the Colaba-Bandra-Speez corridor (line-3),” the affidavit says. The affidavit says, “….the decision to construct the car depot at Aarey Milk Colony has been taken after detailed deliberations at every level.”