Kothrud residents have served a legal notice on the Pune Municipal Corporation (PMC) and filed RTI applications to stop a 20-metre Development Plan road that would remove more than 460 trees behind the Mrityunjayeshwar Temple. PMC crews started felling at the site last week and paused after residents protested, Punekar News and The Bridge Chronicle reported.
What the tree permission allows
The road runs across government land at Survey Nos. 12/2 and 12/5. PMC’s Tree Authority counted 467 trees in the alignment, according to the Free Press Journal. Its permission lets the civic body fell 149 of them and transplant the other 318.
The conditions attached to that permission are the part residents can hold PMC to:
- 6,041 compensatory saplings of local species, each at least 6 feet tall, 10 cm in girth and five years old
- planting within 30 days of the felling
- geo-tagging of every new sapling and seven years of maintenance
- relocation of any bird nests found before a tree comes down
The first approval dates back to October 19, 2023, on an application filed a month earlier. The Free Press Journal reported on September 19 that the current permission stays valid for three months from its date of issue. If PMC does not finish the work in that window, it would need a fresh extension, which reopens the question.
Why residents object
Residents who gathered at Siddharth Towers raised three concerns. A stream and drainage channel crosses the site, and residents fear the road will block it and flood the area in the monsoon. They doubt that transplanted trees survive; they point to earlier PMC transplantation and compensatory plantation drives whose results nobody has shown them. And they question who the road serves.
That last point needs care. A PMC officer told the Free Press Journal that the road leads to a government land parcel worth about Rs 500 crore, earlier proposed for lease to a private institution for 30 years. Residents quoted by Punekar News put the private operation at 20 years. Neither report names the institution, and the lease terms remain unconfirmed.
Where PMC and the corporators stand
Local corporators Manjushree Khardekar and Mitali Savalkar met the protesters and promised to look at a revised alignment that saves more trees. PMC road department officials said the civic body cannot drop the project altogether, Punekar News reported. Environmental researcher Sarang Yadwadkar told residents that a court challenge and sustained public pressure were their realistic options, according to The Bridge Chronicle.
The dispute follows a familiar Pune pattern. DP roads drawn years ago on paper now cut through green patches that grew up in the meantime, and the city’s tree rules let the Tree Authority approve felling as long as the applicant commits to compensatory planting. The geo-tagging condition exists so that anyone can check whether those saplings survive.
What Kothrud residents can do
Anyone can ask PMC, under RTI, for the Tree Authority order, the geo-tagged list of compensatory saplings, and the survival data for the 318 trees it plans to move. A copy of the DP road’s approved alignment and any drainage study for the stream would show whether a shorter or shifted route is possible. Objections carry more weight before the three-month permission window closes than after the trees are gone.
Watch for two things next: whether PMC publishes a revised alignment, and whether residents file a petition before crews return to the site.
Sources: Punekar News, Free Press Journal, The Bridge Chronicle
This report was written with AI assistance from the publicly reported sources linked here; each fact was cross-checked against at least two of them.