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People protesting for Aarey Forests (left) , Mining being done in Maharashtra (right)

Uddhav Thackeray led Maharashtra Govt. declared that 245 hectares of Aarey land adjoining the Sanjay Gandhi National Park will be declared as a reserved forest with much appreciation from the self proclaimed nature lovers and environmentalists who had opposed the felling of trees on 30 hectares of Aarey for the construction of Metro Carshed.

However, something which did not caught the attention of the environmentalists was the proposal which the Maha govt submitted in May/June to the centre asking it to exclude 2600 sq. km area from the Western Ghats ESA for mining and other activities.

The Western Ghats ESA is around 17500 sq. km in Maharashtra which roughly adds up to 2133 villages. The Maharashtra govt having already excluded 358 villages from the ESA, wants the Centre to exclude 17 more villages. The total excluded area will account for 2,60,000 hectares which are around 8500 times more than that of the proposed metro car shed.

The more shocking fact here is that this area lies in the Tiger corridor of the Sawantwadi-Dodamarg reserve. Mining activities will completely destroy the flora as well as fauna and will affect lakhs of trees and thousands of animals.

Before the Maharashtra elections last year, the Shiv sena was up in arms to "protect" Aarey. However, just after coming to power, the same Shiv Sena found it okay to fell 800 trees in Navi Mumbai for a golf course project.

In June this year, around 500 trees were illegally chopped off in Vidarbha's Navagav-Nagzira tiger reserve by the authorities in order to level the land.

The irony here is that the so-called activists and bollywood which protested against the 'essential metro car shed' project chose to stay silent when Shiv Sena lead Maha govt decided to kill biodiversity.

The privileged Bollywood lobby which travels in their luxurious cars never opposed the encroachment by land mafias and the housing complexes (owned by the same lobby) inside Aarey. The Metro project, essential to reduce the plight of common Mumbaikars was scrapped in order to gain political brownie points.

Is mining in the tiger corridor more important than a metro car shed for a congested city like Mumbai?