Hyderabad: The Botanical Garden lake’s bund was damaged, the sluice and the weir dismantled and removed as two earthmovers of the Greater Hyderabad Municipal Corporation dug into the lake and completely filled it with mud and boulders in the name of road widening on Wednesday.
The revenue department, which owns the lake, blocked the operation immediately and seized both the earthmovers. They also put up a board declaring the lake a property of the revenue department.
The foundation stone for the road widening project was laid by caretaker Chief Minister Kiran Kumar Reddy in June 2013. The existing 40 foot road from HCU Depot to Botanical Garden crossroad is now being widened to 120 feet by the GHMC. This will completely destroy the lake and also a stretch of the Kothaguda reserve forest.
“In spite of our repeated complaints before the High Court, no action has been taken by the Lake Protection Committee and its 18 departments. Today, the contractor bulldozed the lake in the presence of GHMC officials,” said Thakur Rajkumar Singh of the Human Rights Forum and Consumer Protection Cell. “The GHMC claims it has permission from the forest department, but the forest officials said that they have not handed over the lake to them. They had granted about 9.09 acres of Kothaguda reserve forest to the GHMC about a week ago. However, the GHMC started road widening even before the land was handed over. The land may belong to them, but the lake is not theirs,” he said.
A source from the Lake Protection Committee (LPC) said, “The LPC is just a coordination committee and we have no powers. We have written to the GHMC several times in vain. We have asked our officers to fully examine the issue and submit a report in a day or two.”
Serilingampally tahsildar Ramesh said that a case about the land is pending and that he can’t offer comments. “The forest land is under dispute. However, when we received information, we stopped construction. A case is pending and I can’t say much,” he said.
