Oh deer! 80 hectares of Murgavani Park vanish

This shocking fact came to light during a recent hearing at the National Green Tribunal in a case related to illegal erection of power supply line towers through the Mrugavani park, also popularly referred to as the Chilkur deer park.

In the case on the power lines, the NGT imposed a fine of Rs 50 lakh on TG Transco for erecting high tension quad towers through Mrugavani, instead of the approved monopoles. The NGT’s southern branch in Chennai, delivered its judgement in the case on May 21. The NGT also disagreed with Transco which sought to explain that the deviation from the original plan was to save on project costs.

The towers for the power lines through the national park are part of the 42-km long 400 KV Kethireddypally-Raidurgam transmission line project, for which Transco erected five towers in the protected area. The total cost of the project was Rs 17,663 crore and was executed by Megha Engineering Infra Ltd (MEIL) for Transco.

It was during the hearing of the case that the forest department admitted that against the 360 hectares of the park area as notified in the official Gazette, the actual park area was 287 hectares. The forest patch close to Himayatsagar and Osmansagar, was notified as a national park in 1988, but the first ever survey was done only in 2023, that too following orders from the court.

In this survey, the department discovered that its first assessment of 287 hectares was wrong, and a further 6.7 hectares were missing from the park’s boundaries bringing the total missing area to 80 hectares.

The forest department is learnt to have not provided any explanation for the second shrinkage of the park area, while the reduction of the area from the gazetted 360 hectares to 287 hectares was sought to have been attributed to “adoption of different techniques for surveying, mapping and area estimating techniques.”

According to Major Sandeep Khurana (retd), an city-based environmentalist working to safeguard the three national parks, “institutions are to uphold the public trust, in safeguarding and preservation of natural resources like forests. It is unfortunate that in this case, both the Forest department and Transco have shaken that trust.” Maj. Khurana (retd) was involved in data collection for the plea in the NGT filed by environmentalists Dr Narasimha Reddy Donthi and Mahesh Mamindla.

He said “national parks deserve the highest level of protection under the law, but alarmingly, we lack surveys or boundary verifications for decades. Fencing the boundary has no basis, since there is no survey in accordance with the Gazette notification to first establish or verify the boundary. Likewise, for Transco to not make the Detailed Project Report public, and to then violate the approved plan, taking advantage of the opacity, is simply against the public trust doctrine. Accountability of officials for the lapses must be fixed.”