Of the 7,000-odd trees chopped, nearly 5,500 were felled without any permission. The NGT has said the transport authority will have to plant eight trees for every one tree cut illegally.
The Maharashtra State Road Development Corporation (MSRDC) has been asked to pay Rs 10 lakh for the afforestation and its contractor has been fined Rs 10 lakh for damaging the environment. If the contractor fails to pay, the MSRDC must bear the cost.
The order also asks the Konkan divisional commissioner to inquire into the illegal felling of trees that should "indicate responsibility for inaction on the part of regional transport office, regional forest office, tehsildar and officers of the MSRDC, including the joint director..."
The NGT was hearing a petition filed by Saiprasad Kalyankar, an environmentalist and villager who lost some of his land to the project. Kalyankar has spent the last seven years collecting evidence to show that the acquisition of the 32 acres for the toll booth was illegal. He received death threats while attempting to prevent the trees from being cut.
The trees were cut between December 2013 and January 2014 in an area which falls within Banda village in Sindhudurg, a stone's throw from the Maharashtra-Goa border. A map of the region shows that several roads bypass the spot, making it completely unsuitable for a toll booth. The area is part of an elephant corridor. Banda is on the list of eco-sensitive areas covered by the Ministry of Environment and Forest in a November 2013 directive.
But the very next month, in December 2013, the tree authority of the Sawantwadi forest department allowed 1,279 trees to be cleared for felling in the area on the grounds that no part of Sindhudurg district had been declared eco-sensitive. In a matter of days, the area was stripped of trees. The same tree authority later said that, while it had issued permission to cut 1,279 trees, Maharashtra's border check-post authorities had cut an additional 5,429.
If constructed, the toll booth would have required the flattening of two hills on either side of a road. TOI had picked 28 rocks off the hillside and had them analyzed in Mumbai by environmentalist Sumaira Abdulali using a Niton portable X-Ray Spectrometer.
The analysis showed that 90% of virtually every one of the 28 rocks contained iron oxide. Many rocks contained over 95% of iron oxide, equivalent to the highest grade iron ore exported by India. Nearly 50% of one rock comprised manganese, which, Abdulali pointed out, was eight times more valuable than iron.
She points to the fact that technology allows for a spot analysis of the metals and minerals present within hills. Anyone interested in mining could very well have used the same device she used, a portable hand-held X-Ray Spectrometer, to gauge the metal content of a hillside.
Villagers fighting deforestation have long claimed that mining, and not a toll booth, were the real reason for the decimation of the forest.
A 2010 note by Maharashtra's Directorate of Geology and Mines said, "It is expected that the project area may incorporate substantial quantities of iron ore, so a no-objection certificate may not be given to the RTO (to build the toll booth)."
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