‘Will benefit large sections of population’, Bombay HC allows felling of 350 mangrove trees for Vadodara-Mumbai Expressway

Stating that the eight-lane Vadodara-Mumbai Expressway will “benefit large sections of the population”, the Bombay High Court recently allowed the National Highways Authority of India’s (NHAI) plea for the felling of 350 mangrove trees for the expressway construction.

The court asked NHAI to abide by its undertaking that it will strictly comply with all the conditions laid out in the project approval by the Union Ministry of Environment, Forest and Climate Change (MoEFFC), including compensatory afforestation through forest departments and developing a nursery to raise seedlings of forestry species.

A division bench of Acting Chief Justice Sanjay V Gangapurwala and Justice Sandeep V Marne on February 2 passed a verdict in NHAI’s plea seeking to fell the mangrove trees, a copy of which was made available on Wednesday.