The Karjat hydropower project has moved from an infrastructure announcement to a test of how Maharashtra balances clean-energy expansion with forest protection, local consent and ecological risk. The proposed 3,000MW facility by Gujarat-based Torrent Power involves the reported removal of 32,490 trees across land in Karjat taluka, Raigad district, prompting opposition from environmental groups and political parties even as the state government and the company say the project has received the required approvals.
Chief minister Devendra Fadnavis said hearings had been held over 18 months and that legal approval had been secured. Torrent Power also said the project had passed a comprehensive statutory process over the same period, including environmental and forest clearances. Those claims establish the government and developer’s position, but they do not resolve the wider question now facing the project: whether a formally cleared energy project can still produce unacceptable ecological and social costs at the site level.
The project is planned in Saidongar, Kotwal Khalati and Pal villages in Karjat. Critics have described the location as adjacent to the Bhimashankar wildlife sanctuary in the Sahyadri-Western Ghats ranges. Fadnavis and Torrent Power have disputed that description, saying the project is 16km from Bhimashankar. Torrent Power has also said no project work is proposed near the Bhimashankar Jyotirlinga temple. The disagreement over location is significant because the distance between a project boundary and a protected or culturally important site can shape how residents understand risk, even when formal approvals have been granted.
The immediate controversy is therefore not only about the number of trees. It is also about how environmental boundaries are defined, communicated and monitored. The reported figure of 32,490 trees has become the central public symbol of the project. Aaditya Thackeray, a Shiv Sena (UBT) MLA, alleged that the eventual loss could reach 400,000 to 500,000 trees, while the government has referred to the lower figure linked to the project’s stated requirement. The supplied report does not independently establish the larger estimate. It does, however, show that the scale of tree loss remains a contested issue and that public debate is being shaped by competing numbers.
Torrent Power has presented the project as a relatively land-efficient clean-energy investment. It said the facility would require about 233 hectares of forest land and claimed that this was around 52 times lower than the forest requirement of a conventional hydropower project of comparable capacity. The company also said it had a compensatory afforestation action plan. These details are intended to place the project within a comparison between different forms of power generation rather than treating the tree-felling figure in isolation.
That comparison is useful but incomplete. A smaller land requirement does not by itself answer questions about the ecological value of the specific forest, the connectivity of habitats, the effect on water systems or the experience of villages located around the project. Nor does the existence of a compensatory afforestation plan establish that replacement planting will reproduce the same ecosystem functions, location-specific biodiversity or livelihood value. The supplied report does not provide the details of the afforestation plan, its monitoring framework, the species involved, the survival benchmarks or the agency responsible for enforcement. Those are among the documents and implementation details that will determine whether the clearance process translates into meaningful environmental protection.
The project has also exposed a tension within the language of public infrastructure. Fadnavis described it as an environment-friendly project that would provide Maharashtra with clean energy. He said no livelihood would be destroyed and added that the government would listen to villagers and seek a way forward. At the same time, he accused the opposition of creating a false narrative and called the political criticism anti-Maharashtra. Torrent Power similarly emphasised the project’s clean-energy character and the approvals it said had been obtained.
The official framing places energy security and investment at the centre of the debate. The chief minister said all investments were in Maharashtra and that the state’s energy rights were a priority. Yet the conflict shows why clean energy cannot be assessed only by its contribution to electricity supply. Infrastructure that reduces dependence on carbon-intensive generation can still generate local environmental disputes when its land, forest and construction impacts are concentrated in particular villages. The central policy challenge is not choosing between energy and the environment in the abstract; it is establishing whether the energy benefit, the local cost and the safeguards have been evaluated transparently and can be verified after approval.
The administrative process described in the report has several layers. The state government has defended the hearings and legal clearances. The company has referred to environmental and forest permissions and a compensatory afforestation plan. Local villagers remain a constituency whose views the chief minister said would be heard. Political parties and environmental organisations are seeking to challenge the project’s ecological and social consequences. These actors do not have the same responsibilities or legal standing, but their competing claims point to a governance problem: approval is a milestone, not the end of accountability.
A project of this size requires clear separation between the questions of whether it has received approval, whether the approval conditions are being met and whether those conditions are adequate to protect affected communities and ecosystems. The supplied material confirms that the government and company say the required process was followed. It does not provide the underlying clearance documents, hearing records, impact assessments, maps, conditions or village-level rehabilitation and livelihood findings. Without those materials, the public cannot independently test the competing claims about the project boundary, the forest area, the full tree count or the consequences for local residents.
The proposed foundation stone ceremony adds another layer to the dispute. Prime minister Narendra Modi is expected to lay the foundation stone on November 3, according to the report. Opposition parties have questioned whether tree cutting is being accelerated to meet the event’s deadline, although the supplied material does not establish that this is happening. Nat Connect Foundation has appealed to Modi to reconsider participation, while Aaditya Thackeray and MNS chief Raj Thackeray have announced visits to Karjat to meet residents, and NCP (SP) leader Rohit Pawar has warned of ecosystem loss. These developments indicate that the ceremony has become a focal point for a broader political and environmental contest.
The presence of a proposed ceremonial milestone can affect how infrastructure decisions are perceived. A foundation stone event signals political commitment and can make a project appear irreversible before construction has been experienced on the ground. That perception makes timely disclosure of clearances, maps, conditions and consultation records more important. It also raises the standard for explaining what remains subject to compliance and monitoring after the ceremony. The report does not state whether all such documents have been publicly released or whether any legal challenge is pending.
The controversy has additionally produced a misinformation-related issue. Adani Group said videos circulating on social media that linked it to the Karjat project were false, misleading and fabricated. The group said it had no project, proposed or ongoing, in the area or its vicinity and was not associated with the activities shown. This clarification matters because inaccurate corporate attribution can distract from the actual accountability chain, which in this case involves the state authorities, Torrent Power, forest and environmental regulators, local administrations and affected communities.
For Maharashtra’s urban and regional development system, the Karjat case illustrates the difficulty of treating infrastructure as a separate sectoral decision. A 3,000MW project is an energy intervention, but its consequences are distributed through land administration, forest governance, village consultation, transport and construction activity, ecological management and regional livelihoods. The project’s public value will therefore depend not only on the electricity it is intended to produce, but also on whether the state can demonstrate that its environmental and social safeguards are specific, measurable and enforceable.
The evidence currently confirms a sharp dispute rather than a settled public consensus. The government and Torrent Power say an 18-month statutory process was completed, required approvals were obtained, forest use is limited to about 233 hectares and compensatory afforestation is planned. Critics contest the ecological implications, the scale of tree loss and the project’s relationship to Bhimashankar. The larger question now is whether the underlying documents and subsequent implementation will allow those claims to be independently examined. The next important developments are the scheduled November 3 foundation stone event, the announced visits to Karjat and the publication or scrutiny of the project’s clearance conditions, forest maps, consultation records and compensatory afforestation commitments.
