Hyderabad: As many as 171 water bodies or local lakes have been encroached in the city over the last decade since Telangana was formed, including those in the Outer Ring Road (ORR), between 2014 and 2023, said a report released by the Planning department, which was submitted to Telangana deputy chief minister Bhatti Vikramarka.
According to the report, Hyderabad and its peripheral areas have a total of 920 tanks or water bodies. It stated that when Telangana was formed in 2014, 225 lakes or tanks were fully encroached, 196 were partly encroached and 499 had no encroachments.
The Planning department report stated that within the last 10 years after Telangana’s formation, 20 lakes or tanks were fully encroached where there was no encroachment. Another 24 lakes that were partly encroached were eventually lost fully to encroachments, and that encroachments had significantly gone up in another 127 lakes.
The report listed out all the encroached lakes with satellite images, along with the geo locations and has been released at a time when the state government is using the Hyderabad Disaster Response and Asset Protection Agency (HYDRA) to clear encroachments from lakes in the city. HYDRA has also been evacuating people who built unauthorised homes on the banks of the Musi river as well.
Over the last two weeks, HYDRA and civic authorities demolished homes and also relocated hundreds of people from the Musi river banks, leading to a political storm. Leaders from within the ruling Congress like Danam Nagender have also censured the government for its demolitions of homes along the Musi river in Hyderabad.
However, both chief minister Revanth Reddy and the deputy chief minister have both defended HYDRA’s actions and said that everyone whoever has been evacuated from there will be given homes in 2BHK houses constructed by the state government,
