Don’t axe trees, take metro lines underground, former judge tells BMRCL

Former Bombay and Karnataka High Court Judge Justice Michael F Saldanha has urged the BMRCL to stop the felling of trees for building metro corridors and redesign the remaining lines as underground sections.

In a letter to Bangalore Metro Rail Corporation Limited (BMRCL) director (Project and Planning) D Radhakrishna Reddy, the judge cited the example of the forest destruction at Mumbai’s Aarey Colony during the BJP regime, saying: "All decisions were clandestine.”

“Nobody was heard and the party in power, which is the same one in Karnataka, proceeded like a bulldozer," the judge stated in the letter, questioning the Union Environment Ministry’s backing for such destruction.

Stating that about 34,000 suffered abuse for protesting the destruction of the Aarey forests, Saldanha noted that the government did not respect rules till the Supreme Court’s belated intervention.

"Maharashtra threw out the party that was then in power. The present government has fixed an alternative site for the car shed, but even after five years, the irreversible damage to the Aarey forest can never be restored," the letter said and added that the government "irreversibly" destroyed 38 species of birds, 48,000 animals and 50 different species of reptiles and rodents.

"In the last 40 years, every civilised country has stopped building flyovers and has stopped overground projects for a variety of very well-defined reasons, which I do not need to restate. Even road projects have gone underground to tunnels and underground parking," the letter said, citing the example of conservation efforts at the Charles de Gaulle Airport in Paris.

The former judge urged BMRCL to halt the cutting of any trees, suspend further overground acquisition and redirect the rest of the project underground.