Navi Mumbai/Mumbai: A day after opposition parties and environmentalists questioned the plan to axe 32,490 trees on land including forest tracts in Karjat, Raigad district, for a 3,000MW hydroelectric power unit by Gujarat-based Torrent Power, CM Devendra Fadnavis on Sunday said hearings were held for 18 months and legal approval was obtained for the project.Critics of the Rs 13,500-crore project have said it will come up adjacent to the Bhimashankar wildlife sanctuary in the Sahyadri-Western Ghats ranges. Fadnavis and the company said it will be 16km away.Accusing the opposition of spreading fake narratives, the CM said, “We are bringing environment friendly projects. All investments are in Maharashtra. Energy rights are also first and foremost of Maharashtra… This project will provide Maharashtra with clean energy. But creating a false narrative is an anti-Maharashtra act. No livelihood will be destroyed. This project is not one that was created in a day. Still, we will listen to the villagers’ views and find a way out. This project is only to ensure that no section of society is deprived. But the fake narrative that is being spread for politics is not right.”Torrent Power, too, said the clean energy project, which will come up in Saidongar, Kotwal Khalati and Pal villages in Karjat, has obtained all required legal permissions. It said in a statement that no project work is proposed near the Bhimashankar Jyotirlinga temple, and that the project underwent a comprehensive statutory process over 18 months before it was granted environmental and forest clearances. It said the project has a limited requirement of about 233 hectares of forest land, which it claimed was around 52 times lower than that of a conventional hydropower project of comparable capacity. It said it has a compensatory afforestation action plan.PM Narendra Modi is expected to lay the foundation stone for the project on Nov 3.Opposition netas turned up the heat. Shiv Sena (UBT) MLA Aaditya Thackeray accused Fadnavis of pushing Maharashtra towards becoming a “desert” through large-scale tree felling. He alleged that while govt says 32,490 trees will be cut for the project, 4-5 lakh trees could, instead, be done away with. He said he will visit Karjat on Monday to meet locals and discuss the next course of action.MNS chief Raj Thackeray has announced that he will visit Karjat taluka on Tuesday to talk to the local villagers and officials. NCP (SP) Rohit Pawar said the tree felling would bring an end to an entire ecosystem and humanity will have to bear its grave consequences. Congress questioned if the tree cutting was being sped up to meet the deadline ahead of Modi’s visit.Environmentalist D Stalin of NGO Vanashakti said the rate at which the forests of Maharashtra are disappearing is too alarming to be ignored, and accused forest department officials of bending to the will of politicians.NatConnect Foundation appealed to Modi to reconsider his participation in the proposed foundation stone laying ceremony on Nov 3.Meanwhile, Adani Group said videos circulating on social media linking it to the project are false, misleading and fabricated. “The group has no project, proposed or ongoing in the area or its vicinity, and is in no way associated with the activities depicted in the circulating videos,” it said in a statement.
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