The civic corporation’s plan to upgrade the main road cutting through the Aarey Milk Colony has upset a green activist. He says the civic body is trying to convert the two-lane thoroughfare into four lanes under the pretext of concretisation, which will lead to loss of green cover.  

“It is shocking to find that BMC is planning to widen the main road through the Aarey forest under the garb of road improvement,” said environmentalist Zoru Bhathena.
The activist said the BMC is legally required to regulate traffic through eco-sensitive zones (ESZs) and forested patches of Aarey. “They certainly cannot use the Aarey forest roads as some sort of traffic short-cut. It is high time our authorities realised that every plan for Aarey should be for reducing the anthropogenic footprint, and never for increasing it,” he said.