The Bombay High Court said to keep larger public interest in mind and to safeguard the environment, the BMC should consider including more experts to the civic body's tree authority on Monday, the BMC should consider including more experts to the civic body's tree authority. A vacation bench of Justices Sarang Kotwal and Sandeep Shinde was hearing applications filed by the Mumbai Metro Rail Corporation Limited, Brihanmumbai Municipal Corporation (BMC), and environmental activist Zoru Bhatena seeking various reliefs related to the tree authority.

In October last year, the high court had restrained the tree authority from taking any decision on applications to cut trees until it had independent experts as nominated members. Last week, the BMC informed the court that the present tree authority has four experts. Bhatena, however, took objection to this and said the tree authority had 15 corporators or councillors and just four experts. He argued the BMC must include an equal number of experts as councillors to ensure permissions for felling trees were not granted indiscriminately. Bhatena's lawyer Snehal told the court on Monday that the high court had, in an earlier order passed in April this year, observed that the number of experts and other members should be equal.