Mumbai civic body sees red over MMRDA’s failed tree plan

The city has lost a lot of its green cover for various projects but the Mumbai Metropolitan Region Development Authority (MMRDA) does not seem interested in replanting them.

The Brihanmumbai Municipal Corporation (BMC) said, the MMRDA, which cut 841 trees for the metro rail project,  has failed miserably when it came to planting/replanting trees. The MMRDA transplanted 376 trees under the metro rail project of which only 146 survived.

The BMC’s efforts to get details of the trees replanted by the authority have not yielded any result. “Since the MMRDA has not been responding to the BMC’s repeated communication about replanting, it is obvious that the authority has not done its bit. This shows the lackadaisical approach of a public body towards green efforts,” said Amit Satam, a member of BMC’s Tree Authority.

After failing to get a response from the chief minister-headed planning agency, the municipal corporation has decided to summon its officials to enquire on the issues.

“We are going to summon them to know what happened to the planting/replanting drive. The MMRDA officials will inform the committee members if they have planted trees , if yes, then where,” said Kamlashankar Yadav, BMC’s garden superintendent. Terming MMRDA’s and the BMC’s actions as “an eye wash”, green activists like Matunga-based Nikhil Desai, member of NGO AGNI, said, “Mayor Sunil Prabhu’s recent announcement of planting one lakh trees in the city during monsoon.”

Meanwihle, MMRDA joint project director Dilip Kawathkar said, “We have a plan to carry out compensatory tree plantation which we keep following.”