Mumbai, February 23: Around 250 people from Mumbai have decided to travel to their native villages in Gujarat’s Kutch to protest against the draft maps prepared under the Coastal Regulation Zone (CRZ) notification 2019. Kutchi Mumbaikars have planned to collect visual proofs of the coastal resources near their villages and present them at the public hearing organised in Bhuj on February 27.
As the draft maps are ready, environment lovers and activists in Kutch have started opposing it alleging misappropriation in the documents to pave way for industries in the coastal areas. The rage of opposition has reached till Mumbai where a large number of people from the Kutchi communities are also raising their voices to save the coast and natural resources of their native villages in Kutch. People from various communities allege that the draft maps were prepared without visiting the actual coastal areas.
Differences Between Map And Actual Location To Be Highlighted:
The Jain community of a coastal village Bada in the Mandvi taluka of Kutch has invited all Kutchi natives in Mumbai to participate in the public hearing. The community has requested other fellow Mumbaikars belonging to the 89 coastal villages of Kutch to visit their native villages and check the authenticity of the draft maps. People will also collect photographic evidence about the differences between the map and the actual location.
Hasmukh Haria, a member of Bada Jain Community, said, “We do not want our native villages to be choking with smoke and fumes like it is happening in some of the cities of southern Gujarat. Kutch has a coastline of more than 400km and it is home to some of the most endangered turtles and other marine species. We are not against development but we do not want our ecosystem to be affected by it.”
Impact Of Projects On Coastal Communities:
The community had organised an online video conference on Thursday to explain the coastal zone management plans. People from Mumbai as well as Kutch joined the meeting and planned their course of action to oppose the CRZ notification.
Dhwani Shah, an independent environment researcher, a native of Kutch residing in Mumbai, led the online video conference and educated the participants about the impact of the coastal zone management plans on the lives of the coastal communities. She said, “The main aim was to spread awareness among the public regarding the importance of the maps and the effects of wrong mapping. Several coastal villages are not named in the GPCB public hearing notice, the maps have been published only in English and the executive summary is also not translated in Gujarati for the local community, which is the reason for concern.”
A large number of people from the Bada Jain community in the city travelled to Kutch in October 2022 to oppose the proposed soda ash plant of GHCL Limited at the public hearing. The hearing, which continued for more than 12 hours, had seen a strong protest by the natives from Mumbai and as a result, the company has still not received the environmental clearance.
