MUMBAI: Members of the Save Aarey group plans to make Prime Minister Narendra Modi and chief minister Devendra Fadnavis aware about their grievances, regarding the authorities’ plan to take up development on their land. The group has requested Mumbaikars to mass tweet the CM and PM about the need to leave Aarey untouched on March 1.

The locals, living on Aarey land, have raised concerns about the development plans and said they would prefer one of the city’s last green lungs is left unscathed.

There are two important developments which have been proposed on the land. A proposal was recently tabled before the Brihanmumbai Municipal Corporation (BMC) tree authority committee put up by MMRDA, which said that 2,298 trees, obstructing the car-shed plan for the Metro III, need to be transplanted or cut; 2,044 can be transplanted and 254 will have to be cut.

The BMC’s Development Plan 2034 draft also mentions new economic development on the Aarey land. The draft proposes development on 1,009 hectares. There are also plans for a central park, a theme park, a botanical garden and other activities, including educational campuses, a bus corridor and an elevated route connecting the eastern and western suburbs.

The Save Aarey members plan to tweet with the #saveaarey hashtag. They also said that Mumbaikars can write about the need for open spaces. “The more varied the tweets are, the less orchestrated and spontaneous they will sound. We are keen that people tweet between noon to 2pm on March 1 so that the tweets flood the CM and PMs twitter handles at the same time. However, we are not restricting people from tweeting only at that time on Sunday,” a member said.

Locals living on Aarey land said they were shocked on hearing about the development plans. Bhupesh Gupta said, “This is likely to spoil the ecological balance. Locals are very emotional about any development, considering it’s one of the last green areas left in the western suburbs. We should have been consulted.”