Carmichael Rd residents rally around threatened banyan tree

While Mumbai’s green cover disappears with alarming alacrity, one tree is refusing to go down quietly. Just a few hundred metres from the municipal commissioner’s bungalow on Carmichael Road, a residents’ group is fighting to save a giant heritage banyan tree whose canopy of roots and branches has somehow survived the city’s relentless march from green to grey.

The banyan stands like an arboreal ancestor watching many human absurdities unfold over the one-acre plot that was once earmarked for a children’s park but is now listed as ‘residential zone’ in the latest development plan because it was never acquired by the Brihanmumbai Municipal Corporation (BMC). The plot now belongs to Mah-Hill Properties, a subsidiary of Adani Enterprises. It was bought for Rs 170 crore last year from the heirs of the Gamadia family.

Over the years, members of the Carmichael Road Residents Association have been writing regularly to various concerned authorities, including the Superintendent of Gardens and the Tree Authority. The association has requested a tree census of the heritage trees on the plot, invoking Sections 8 and 20 of the Maharashtra (Urban Areas) Protection and Preservation of Trees Act, 1975, which says that no one can chop down a tree on any land in an urban area, without the previous permission of the Tree Officer, even if they own the land.