Tree Authority’s dubious history

Mumbai: The Bombay high court order of April this year had come in the wake of indiscriminate tree cutting permissions that were given by the Tree Authority of the Thane Municipal Corporation. The Asian Age had earlier reported in November last year that a PIL was filed in the high court stating the then-formed Tree Authority was not constituted properly with qualified members and independent experts and the proposal to remove 5,200 trees was tabled in one meeting.

The court direction dealt with the constitution of Tree Authority and the procedure to be followed.

For the constitution of the Tree Authority, the minimum required strength is five, while the maximum is thirteen. The court upheld the directions given in a similar petition filed in case of Tree Authority of the Pune Municipal Corporation which stated that, “The PMC has stated that the total number of members should be fixed at seven and corporators who are science graduates would be preferred.

A membership of seven non-official members is, in our view, fair and proper having regard to the need of making the functioning of the tree authority of manageable proportion.

The nominated members should belong to independent NGOs, and the PMC has stated that not more than one person shall be appointed from the same NGO.”

The order also entailed that the observation will equally apply to the cities of Mumbai and Thane as well as metropolitan cities in the state.

The order also stated that the Tree Authority shall publish the relevant information relating to the tree census and tree-cutting and transplantation on its website.