“Aarey is not a forest”, that is what the Bombay High Court said while delivering its judgment where it cleared the felling of over 2,500 trees in Aarey Colony to make way for a car shed for the Mumbai Metro Rail Corporation Limited.
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The Aarey Colony measuring over 1,287 hectares is a greenbelt in Mumbai’s Goregaon suburb, it's got more than 5 lakh trees. The BMC wants around 2,500 of these trees gone to develop the Mumbai metro network. This is what triggered a protest, and a legal row between the petitioners and some citizens of Mumbai on one side and the Mumbai Metro Rail Corporation Limited and the BMC on other.
On 4 October, the Bombay High Court refused to declare Aarey Colony a forest area. Moreover, it approved the BMC's decision to go ahead and chop down the trees in the area.
Why and how did the High Court approve this? Why are there debates in the court about whether Aarey is a forest or not? Tune in to The Big Story podcast!