PUNE: The National Green Tribunal (NGT) has restrained the Talegaon Dabhade Municipal Council from felling any trees for a proposed road widening project and has pulled up the civic body for failing to implement the provisions of the Maharashtra (Urban Areas) Protection and Preservation of Trees Act, 1975. The order was passed on a petition filed by Sandeep Sanghvi and Somnath Shinde, who had raised objections to the cutting of 297 trees between Jijamata Chowk and Talegaon station road. The Talegaon Dabhade Municipal Corporation had passed a resolution on October 3, 2012 to cut the trees for a road widening project. A notice was given in local newspapers following which several non-governmental organizations and activists raised objection to the cutting of the trees. Some of these trees are around 100 to 150 years old and they are ecologically very important. They are the nesting sites for birds, some of them are endangered species, said Ganesh Jagtap, legal counsel for the petitioners. Disposing the petition on August 25, the bench restrained the civic body from cutting the trees in any manner by themselves or through any agency nominated by them. The tribunal observed that the municipal council had failed to file an application with the tree authority to seek permission to cut the trees before passing the resolution. Such an application should have been accompanied with details of the trees, a site plan that indicated which trees had to be cut along with reasons. Moreover, in the course of the hearing, the legal counsel for the municipal council told the tribunal that the notice had been published merely to ascertain the response of members of the public and an exercise to gauge public sentiment. We find that the exercise is futile in the eye of law, the tribunal observed. While the petitioners had prayed that the existing tree authority should be abolished and a new body formed in its place, the tribunal said that it did not want to comment on the procedure undertaken by the municipal council for constituting the tree authority or the decisions taken by it on objections raised by the public. We expect the municipal council of Talegaon Dabhade to take reasonable decision, so as to ensure that minimum environmental damage is caused in keeping with the principle of sustainable development and the principle of doctrine of ?public trust, the order states.
Posted on: Thu, 11 Sep 2014 11:35:55 +0000
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