BMC’s Tree Authority faces embarrassment as its five-member expert panel now only has one expert left. This shrink has occurred over the past two months, raising serious concerns for the authorities. At the moment, Subash Patne remains the only expert on the board.
A Bombay High Court order from last year asked the Tree Authority to appoint experts in order to assist 13 corporator members with the streamlining of planting new trees as well as reduction of tree felling. Following this order, five experts were appointed in March this year.
In August this year, the Tree Authority came under fire for passing a vote for the removal of 2,646 trees in the Aarey Colony for the construction of the controversial Metro III car shed. Days after the vote, two of the five experts appointed in March, Shashirekha Sureshkumar and Chandrakant Salunkhe resigned claiming that they were tricked into voting for the removal of the trees in Aarey Colony. Sureshkumar also claimed that she didn’t know what she was voting for as the proceedings were reportedly in Marathi.
Sureshkumar is an Associate Professor and Head of the Department of Botany at Mithibai College while Chandrakant Salunkhe is a scientist in the Bhabha Atomic Research Centre. In October, the two experts requested to be allowed to withdraw their resignations, citing deceit as the reason for their original resignation. However, it seems like their requests will not be acknowledged.
Last week, two more experts, Deepak Apte and Manohar Sawant were sacked from the board after they failed to attend multiple meetings that were held after the August vote. “They are no longer members. Failure to attend three consecutive meetings leads to automatic disqualification,” a civic official mentioned.
On October 4 this year, the Mumbai Metro Rail Corporation Ltd or MMRCL received a reprieve when the Bombay High Court concluded that the decision taken by the Tree Authority was “based on reason” and transparent. This led to the MMRCL beginning felling of the trees in the area the same night.
However, since the new government was formed under Chief Minister Uddhav Thackeray, one of the first decisions of the government was to stay the construction of the proposed car shed for Metro III.
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