For the past week, citizens and environment activists in Mumbai have been celebrating a rare victory. The forested expanse of Aarey Colony ...
For the past week, citizens and environment activists in Mumbai have been celebrating a rare victory. The forested expanse of Aarey Colony in the north of the city will no longer be the site of the controversial Metro 3 rail line car shed.
Maharashtra Chief Minister Uddhav Thackeray made the announcement on October 11, declaring that the 30-hectare Metro 3 car shed will be shifted to a government-owned plot in the suburb of eastern Kanjurmarg. Thackeray also declared 800 acres of land in Aarey Colony as a reserved forest – something that environmentalists have been demanding for years.
These decisions have been made three years after activists first challenged the proposed metro car shed in the Bombay High Court, and more than a year after thousands of Mumbai residents took to the streets to protest the car shed project.
Aarey, often referred to as Mumbai’s last remaining “green lung”, is a 1,300-hectare forested land south of the Sanjay Gandhi National Park. It is home to 27 Adivasi villages, at least nine leopards and nearly five lakh trees. The metro car shed project proposed to cut down more than 2,600 of those trees. In mid-2019, city residents spent several months fighting back through rallies, protest marches, human chains and...
