BMC assures Forest Department it won't claim land in SGNP

Civic officials say as the tunnel for the Goregaon-Mulund Link Road will go under the Sanjay Gandhi National Park, they don't need access to the land above

Days after getting the green signal from the National Wildlife Board, the Brihanmumbai Municipal Corporation (BMC), is trying to get the final nod from the Forest Department (FD), before it commences work on the Rs 4,000 crore Goregaon-Mulund Link Road project.

On Wednesday, the BMC sent a letter to Vikas Kharge, the principal secretary of the Forest Department, giving an assurance that the civic body would not lay claim on the land above the tunnel, that will pass under the Sanjay Gandhi National Park as part of the GMLR.

Senior civic officials said that the FD had earlier given its approval to the project on the condition that the BMC would offer land as compensation, which would be used for afforestation. But civic officials had argued that since the tunnel would be below the ground, the BMC would not need access to the 19.43 hectares of land above.

The FD had then asked the BMC to make a written submission about the same. "Based on mining laws, compensatory afforestation doesn't apply to us. The Forest Department officials had assumed that in case we have ventilation shafts or ducts they would have outlets in the ground above. But we don't need them. So we have submitted a letter with an undertaking that we won't make any claims to the user rights of the land in the future," said a civic official.

Since this was the only contention raised by the FD, the BMC is confident that they will get its approval soon. A senior official of the FD said that they will need to go through the minutes of the meeting held with members of the National Wildlife Board before taking a decision.

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