Tucked inside Mumbai's last green lung… sits a hospital almost no one talks about.
It's called Aarey Hospital.
Surrounded by forest. Surrounded by tribal hamlets. And right now — barely running.
That's about to change.
The Brihanmumbai Municipal Corporation has proposed taking over the state-run Aarey Hospital in Goregaon.
Not for a year.
Not for five.
👉 For 30 years.
The state keeps ownership of the land. The BMC picks up everything else — operations, maintenance, taxes, utilities, licences, liabilities.
The building? Handed over free of cost.
Aarey isn't just a forest.
It's home to roughly 27 tribal padas with an estimated 8,000 Adivasi residents living deep inside Mumbai's eco-sensitive zone.
For years, their reality has been brutally simple:
A city of skyscrapers… and a community stuck without a real hospital next door.
Here's what the BMC is actually inheriting:
No bulldozers. No mega-construction.
Civic officials say the structure already exists — they just need repairs and upgrades before flipping the switch on expanded services.
Smart, because Aarey sits inside the eco-sensitive buffer around Sanjay Gandhi National Park. Any heavy redevelopment would trigger a wall of environmental clearances.
The BMC isn't getting a blank cheque to do whatever it wants.
Under the proposal, it must:
The move follows BMC's own submissions to the Maharashtra State Human Rights Commission earlier this year, where it confirmed the transfer paperwork was nearly done.
On Wednesday, the improvement committee deliberated… and didn't fully approve it yet.
They sent it back for minor modifications before final sign-off.
Close. But not done.
Once cleared, this becomes one of the rare moments where Mumbai's civic muscle officially walks into its forest — not to build a metro shed, not to cut trees…
but to finally show up for the people who've lived there all along.
A hospital for the forest. Long overdue.
That's all for now!
