Mumbai: The Mumbai Metropolitan Region Development Authority (MMRDA) has made a provision to transplant nearly 4,090 trees that are affecting various infra projects including metro corridors. An expenditure provision of Rs 1.81 crore has been made for tree transplantion.MMRDA officials assured that utmost care will be taken to minimise tree transplantation by adopting appropriate modifications in the alignment of the project wherever possible. Besides this, the state government has initiated a mission of planting more than 33 crore new trees. MMRDA has approached the State government to provide suitable land parcels so that they can contribute in the mission, in a way to compensate the trees affected due to the project.
The forest department has already offered them 56 hectares of land at various locations for carrying out plantation drive of which 10 hectares land is offered in Shil Phata at Kalyan. Meanwhile, MMRDA awaits approvals from civic tree authority for felling and transplantation of trees to make way for two metro corridors — 2B (D N Nagar to Mandale) and 4 (Wadala Thane-Kasarvadavli). Officials informed although construction related activities like soil testing, utility identification and other has been started, the work progress is going on slowly.“Until the proposal for tree cutting and transplantation do not get approved the work on these two metro lines will continue to progress with the same speed,” the official said.
