A hearing on Friday about a docket issued by the Pune Municipal Corporation (PMC) regarding the felling of 689 trees for the Riverfront Development (RFD) between Wakad Bypass and Sangvi Bridge ended with a small victory for the residents and environmental activists of the city who had objected.

The Tree Officer Vijay Naykal said that he was adjourning the hearing and would recommend that the docket be cancelled. Naykal also said that he would bring a notice, about the legalities of advertising the docket in newspapers, issued by activist Rekha Joshi to the attention of his seniors.

The hearing began with Joshi calling attention to a Bombay High Court case of Abhijeet Mohan Anturkar versus the PMC Tree Authority from February this year. “PMC published advertisements for dockets that ask people to go to their website, download the necessary information and then raise objections. But, the High Court said that this was not the way. An advertisement has to have complete information, including who is the applicant and why they want to cut trees. How many trees are involved? And what is the placement of the trees? PMC is required to mention these details in their advertisements, which they never do, because they ask us to go to the website and look into it,” said Joshi.

She added that, since the Bombay High Court judgement was announced in February and the advertisement for the docket was in March, she issued a legal notice to the Commissioner, Assistant Commissioner and the Tree Authority that they were violating HC orders. “I am happy that the Tree Authority officer said that he would send out a letter on the issues discussed today to the higher ups on Monday. He would be giving all legal issues involved in that,” says Joshi.

Speaking after Joshi, Pushkhar Kulkarni, another citizen, pointed out that issuing the docket itself was bad in law. “When the term of the previous corporators ended, the term of the previous Tree Authority of the PMC also ended. The Tree authority, as per the Maharashtra Urban Tree Act, has to comprise elected representatives as well as civil society and NGOs, among others. Since the dissolution of the previous body of the municipal corporation, the state-appointed administrator, which was the PMC Commissioner, was the one acting as the tree authority. Once the 2026 municipal elections were conducted and there were elected representatives. it became incumbent upon the PMC and the elected representatives to come together and immediately form the Tree Authority. It has been two months since the elected representatives have come into power. Why have they not formed the tree authority?” he asked.

Kulkarni asked why did PMC publish the docket without forming the Tree Authority? “Why did they even entertain a proposal in March and come out with that public notice in March? They have no authority, as of now, to release a notice or to invite suggestions, objections and conduct a hearing. They will have to scrap this document, which is what they have promised to do. Let us see,” he said.

Prajakta Mahajan, another objector, handed over photographs of trees that were already being felled and buried on the stretch even before the hearing took place. Naykal said that it is likely to be done by some outsiders and not the PMC. He said that a culprit could be penalised for such a violation.