Mumbai-based activist Zoru Bhatena has moved the Bombay High Court, seeking directions that the city’s civic body be restrained from carrying out itself, or allowing residents to undertake ‘trimming’ and ‘hacking’ of trees. In his plea, mentioned before a division bench of justices AS Oka and RI Chagla, on June 4, 2018, the activist highlighted recent news reports according to which, the Brihanmumbai Municipal Corporation (BMC) has granted ‘blanket permission’ to nine public and private bodies, to trim trees on their premises for the next three years.
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Bhatena urged the bench to stay such permissions and to direct the BMC, to trim or fell trees only in accordance with the Maharashtra (Urban Areas) Protection and Preservation of Trees (Amendment) Act. He also urged the court to ensure that permissions for trimming and pruning of healthy trees, be given only by the civic body’s Tree Authority and not by individual officers from the department concerned. The bench is likely to hear the contentions made in the plea in detail on June 12, 2018, along with a main Public Interest Litigation (PIL) filed by Bhatena.
The main PIL was filed earlier this year, challenging the provisions of the Trees Act that empower the municipal commissioner to sanction felling of up to 25 trees, while applications for cutting more than 25 trees go before the Tree Authority.
On the PIL, the HC, in April 2018, had observed that the civic body had been exercising its powers arbitrarily, in sanctioning the felling of trees. The court had told the BMC to grant such permissions, only after consulting experts and getting their opinion in each case.
