Save 5k trees from being cut: Bombay High Court to Thane Municipal Corporation

“We want to save the trees,” observed the Bombay High Court on Wednesday, asking the Thane Municipal Corporation to re-consider constituting the tree authority, comprising qualified personnel.

A division bench of Justices Abhay Oka and P N Deshmukh said, “The allegations made in the PIL are of serious nature and it needs to be looked into by the highest authority of the corporation.” The court has already held the present tree authority committee to be prima facie illegal, and stayed the authority from giving any further permissions to cut trees.

Senior Advocate Ram Apte, appearing for the civic body, informed the court that it had not acted upon the earlier permission for cutting trees given by the authority and thus 5,236 trees, which were supposed to be cut, are still there. To this, the bench said, “Only if need be for any development project or for any other important work, should permission be given.”

The court gave the direction while hearing a PIL filed by Thane resident Rohan Joshi. In his petition, he has highlighted how the councillors and other special invitees appointed to the tree authority are not adequately educated in subjects related to trees. Further it was argued that only three members of the committee are graduates in science/botany/agriculture fields, while others have lower educational qualifications and political patronage.

The PIL also challenged the decision taken in October 2017, claiming them to be not in conformity with law. According to the petitioner, the authority had in the meeting granted permission to cut over 5,000 trees for various projects, both public and private.