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Wednesday, August 6, 2014

After Malin Tragedy , who is next?

After Malin Tragedy residents living in hilly area are scared .They fear that haphazard and illegal cutting of hilltop/hill slopes may cause Malin like incidence in their their villages. Visit to such areas prove that vast number of illegal excavation, hill cutting, unauthorized development is going on in and around pune. Large number of hills, mountains and lands are being excavated without any necessary permission.


In Mugawade near Paud in Mulshi tehsil of Pune district,  sahyadri hill is being excavated by mine blasting since last some years.

Hill is being excavated

You can Imagine scale of excavation

It is not case that citizens have not complained about such activities to the administration. As far as Mugawade is concerned here is what former sarapanch of the village has to say about it. Earlier there was also lands slide here; crop was destroyed however developer managed the things with help of money and muscle power.


Sahyadri hill is pride of India, it is also UNESCO world heritage site,  it is one of eight hottest hotsopts of biological diversity in the world . it belongs to history of Maharashtra and Shivaji maharaj. This is not the only site being excavated there are several other such sites. However now a days Land mafias hand in gloves with administration have obtained full control over some part of this heritage hill.

  There is  illegal excavation , hill cutting , indiscriminate tree cutting going on this part of the hill. Land mafias are developing so called proposed N.A plots, farmhouse plots, bungalow plots, and private hill stations causing lot of nuisance to environment. Citizens keep complaining but administration does not pay the attention to it, because either they are party to or partner in such illegal developments. None of these developers have non agriculture ( N.A) permissions even then work is going on in full swing.

It can not be said that every digging or excavation is illegal, but if these activities are legal why the district administration is hiding the information? What is the harm in disseminating information about how many of those are legal? Have they taken all the necessary permissions or not ? etc . Actually all this information must be on website.  All such permissions and extensions to them fall u/s 4 of RTI Act and administration is bound to disseminate such information. However administration doesn’t do that,  because they want to help land mafias.

 If administration doesn’t take necessary steps immediately to stop such illegal development and disclose information related to N.A and other necessary permissions, they ( administrators) and  purchasers of such properties should be held responsible for any mishap in future.
The scale of excavation




Can this type of cosmetic efforts help arrest landslide? You can easily see the compound to stop landslid and below it is part of hiil that can slide anytime. This is second home of so called intellectuals  on privately owned Hill station

Is this love for nature or rape on environment?