Aarey protests: Aaditya Thackeray faces action for 'child labour'

The fight between Thackerays and the new Maharashtra government over Aarey forest in Mumbai has begun with the National Commission for Protection of Child Rights (NCPCR) accusing Aaditya Thackeray of using “child labour” during the recent protest.

The NCPCR has asked the Mumbai Police Commissioner to register a case against the former state environment minister, who was instrumental in stopping BJP leader and then CM Devendra Fadnavis from implementing the metro car shed project on the forest land. When Uddhav Thackeray became the CM in 2019, Aaditya got his father to reverse the Aarey metro project.

Aaditya was at the protest rally in Aarey on Sunday and later tweeted photos that showed some children holding placards in the background.

Now that Shiv Sena is out of power, the new government led by Eknath Shinde and Devendra Fadnavis has reived the Aarey plan.

Since then Aaditya has been attending events led by NGOs and civil society groups that are opposed to the Aarey car shed project.

Apart from leopards, some 300 different varieties of flora and fauna are found in the Aarey forest, located in suburban Goregaon and adjacent to the Sanjay Gandhi National Park. According to environment activists, the forest not only provides fresh air to people of the city, but it also a key habitat for the wildlife, including some endemic species. The forest has some five lakh trees, and also has a couple of rivers and some lakes flowing through it, they say. Maharashtra Deputy Chief Minister Devendra Fadnavis recently directed state Advocate General and the administration to submit a proposal on building the car shed in Aarey Colony, instead of Kanjurmarg which was chosen by the previous Uddhav Thackeray-led state government.

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In 2014, the Metro-3 car shed was first proposed at Aarey by then chief minister Prithviraj Chavan, which was challenged by local NGO Vanshakti in the Bombay High Court, with a plea to prevent cutting of trees in the area.

Fadnavis, who succeeded Chavan, went ahead with the same site.

But, green activists had vehemently opposed the cutting of trees in Aarey for the car shed.