A hole in Delhi’s green lung

Supreme Court orders to maintain Delhi's Ridge forest, but 1,100 trees cut illegally, sparking environmental outrage.

In the summer of 1996, as parts of the Ridge, Delhi’s main forested area, was under threat, the Supreme Court noted that that some parts of it had been “erased”. It passed a landmark order that it is mandatory to keep the area free of encroachers and that “its pristine glory must be maintained for all times (sic)”. Environmentalists believed the Ridge was safe.

Twenty-eight summers later, white-haired Ram Murthy, who lives near the southern part of the forest area, in a hut off Gaushala Road in Chhatarpur, remembers “important-looking people” with the police visiting the area in February. Within days, hundreds of trees were cut.“Workers came with big machines and hauled the logs onto their trucks, leaving barren land behind,” Murthy said. She didn’t experience what else went down, because she scrambled away from the area with her tea-and-biscuit cart to ensure they didn’t break that as well. Her pucca house and shop, adjacent to the boundary wall of a farmhouse had been razed by authorities in November 2023.

The cutting of the trees made national headlines this July after two petitions were filed, one in the Delhi High Court and another in the Supreme Court. Both revealed that about 1,100 trees were cut in the southern Ridge and the adjoining area of Satbari by the Delhi Development Authority (DDA) that manages land and housing for the city’s residents, and comes under the Central government. The felling did not have a go-ahead from the Supreme Court that now wants 100 trees planted for every one chopped down.

This violation is not limited to the Ridge. In the past, there have been similar instances of ecological transgressions.

For instance, the DDA and various other agencies have still not physically demarcated the Yamuna floodplain, leading to encroachments and events that cause damage to the ecosystem. Every winter Delhi and many parts of the Indo-Gangetic plains face severe air pollution, but citizens see no signs of an improvement. Caught in a political dissonance, Delhiites experience the impact of environmental neglect and degradation first-hand.

The ruling Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) has been attacking Delhi Lieutenant-Governor V.K. Saxena, and on Saturday protested in front of the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) headquarters in Delhi. They claim the L-G is “a killer of trees”. The L-G has not responded to this; instead, he has highlighted the greening efforts under his tenure and his plans of tree plantation in the Capital.

The Ridge is the tail end of the ancient Aravali hills, which are around 1,500 million years old as per government reports, and form a band, stretching from Gujarat, through Rajasthan and Haryana, and ending in Delhi. It is ecologically biodiverse, the home to a variety of flora and fauna native to the region, from babul (Acacia nilotica), phulahi (Acacia modesta), and katha (Acacia catechu) to nilgai, porcupine, and the palm civet.