The protestors carried banners with messages like "save Aarey forest"

Since July 2022, every Sunday morning, a group of citizens have been gathering at a road junction in the Aarey forest in Goregaon

They protest to seek protection for one of the last surviving natural areas in the city

The campaign to save Aarey, the forest area adjacent to Sanjay Gandhi National Park, has been going on for a while

The plea by residents, campaigners and NGOs, has been to stop the building of a Metro car shed in the Aarey Colony area after cutting down trees

The Aarey forest, located in the Northern suburbs of Mumbai, with its lush greenery and rich biodiversity, has numerous Adivasi settlements spread across the area of the forest who have been living in the area predating the Aarey Dairy farm which was set up in 1951

The Aarey Colony was established in 1949 across 1,287 hectares of land in Goregaon and it comes under the jurisdiction of Maharashtra’s dairy development department

According to government data — of the total land in Aarey — 430 hectares have been allotted to different state and central government departments and institutes

Besides, the dairy department has 30 stable units in the area and about 27 tribal hamlets are spread over another 1,000 acres