Supreme Court to hear tomorrow on Aarey tree felling, converts students’ letter into PIL

mangaloretoday.com/ yahoo

New Delhi, Oct 06: The Supreme Court has taken suo motu cognisance of the tree felling in north Mumbai’s Aarey colony and will hold a special sitting on Monday after it converted a representation by a group of law students into a Public Interest Litigation.

A special bench has been formed for urgent hearing of the case against the felling of over 2,600 trees in Aarey colony for the construction of a Mumbai Metro car shed, which has sparked massive protests in the city. The SC judges are on vacation from October 7 to 12 for Dussehra.

A notice posted on the apex court’s website said a "special bench has been constituted to hear the matter tomorrow i.e. 7th October, 2019 at 10.00 a.m. on the basis of a letter dated 6th October, 2019 addressed by Rishav Ranjan with regard to felling of trees in state of Maharashtra which has been registered as a public interest litigation."

A group of law students of a Noida-based college had on Sunday approached Chief Justice Ranjan Gogoi, seeking the court’s immediate intervention to stop felling of trees in Mumbai.

"The ‘Car Shed’ is sought to be located in 33 hectare land at Aarey. This is on the banks of the ‘Mitthi River’ and which has tributaries and channels flowing to it and emptying in the river. Its absence can flood Mumbai and it has more than 3500 trees in it out of which 2238 is proposed to be cut down. The question is why should a forest which has 3500 trees in it on the banks of a river be removed," the students asked in the representation to the CJI.

In the letter, the students asked the court to exercise its epistolary jurisdiction for "environmental concerns and protection of Aarey without getting into technicalities as there was no time for preparation of proper appeal petition".

The Bombay HC had on Friday rejected a plea against the axing of trees, and the BMC had soon after started chopping trees down under the cover of darkness. A group of activists who protested against the decision were detained and arrested by the police.