India, Aug. 15 -- The Supreme Court on Thursday cleared the decks for tunnelling work to begin as part of the Goregaon-Mulund Link Road (GMLR) project, including allowing the Brihanmumbai Municipal Corporation (BMC) to remove 95 trees from the protected Aarey forest, which serves as a green lung for Mumbai.

A bench of Chief Justice of India (CJI) Bhushan R Gavai and justice K Vinod Chandran passed the order after it was informed that the Maharashtra State Tree Authority has directed the BMC to undertake compensatory afforestation of 1,344 trees to make up for the 70 trees to be felled and 25 to be translocated due to the infrastructure project. In addition, the BMC submitted expert studies showing that the present road alignment of the G...