New Delhi: Around 32,000 trees have been cut, and another 9,000 are at risk, to make way for the Mumbai-Vadodara highway project spearheaded by the National Highway Authority of India (NHAI).
The highway, connecting Vadodara in Gujarat and Jawaharlal Nehru Port in Maharashtra’s Raigad district, could lead to large-scale destruction of green cover with the felling of over 39,000 trees in Palghar, Thane and Raigad districts of Maharashtra, Hindustan Times reported.
According to NHAI’s response to a Right to Information (RTI) query, the project requires 2,242 hectares of land for a stretch of the highway that will pass through Maharashtra. This includes 304 hectares of forest land. Nearly 2,100 hectares have already been acquired. Despite assurances of compensatory afforestation, the proposed cutting of 39,132 trees, including those in forest areas, has raised alarms among environmental activists.
The permission to cut 13,763 trees in forest areas and 18,961 trees in non-forest areas has already been given.
Apart from the loss of green cover, the construction plan includes the demolition of 3,086 houses and buildings, 48 religious structures and 185 large warehouses, the paper reported.
Palghar district, renowned for its lush greenery and diverse fauna, stands to bear the brunt of this development. Already grappling with ongoing infrastructure projects such as the Mumbai-Ahmedabad bullet train and the Vadhavan port near Dahanu, the district is set to take a huge hit to its green cover.
Anshumali Srivastava, chief general manager of NHAI, said that compensatory afforestation would be done for the lost tree cover. “We have already deposited the money with the Maharashtra forest department,” he told the Hindustan Times.
Environmental activist D. Stalin of NGO Vanshakti said, “The relentless onslaught on the state’s forests and virgin landscapes needs to stop. The ecological loss and the value of lost habitats can never be properly quantified. Why is it that every forest must have traffic in it, on it or below it? Even if it is an underground project, the work does impact the surface during the construction phase. There is zero concern for the trauma caused to wildlife.”
The Union transport ministry maintains that the completion of the project will ease congestion on routes leading to Jawaharlal Nehru Port, Maharashtra’s largest container port. The NHAI is also constructing a tunnel under Matheran hill station to connect to JNPA.
Anshumali Shrivastava, the chief general manager of NHAI, said that the Maharashtra stretch would be ready by May 2025 while the 3.5-km tunnel under Matheran will be ready by March 2025. “The entire stretch in Maharashtra will be concretised and it will be an eight-lane highway,” he said. “We will provide wayside amenities like fuel pumps and eateries at a distance of every 50 km,” he told the Hindustan Times.
