Hyderabad: With a clear disagreement to the Telangana government’s Strategic Road Development Plan (SRDP), the citizens of Hyderabad move united to protect the trees from being axed at the iconic Kasu Brahmananda Redddy (KBR) Park to facilitate construction of multilevel flyovers in phases on the four roads around the KBR National Park.
Soon after the forest department gave the nod to the Greater Hyderabad Municipal Corporation (GHMC) for felling 1,394 trees, the perturbed green brigade of Hyderabad city floated an online petition, demanding that the decision to be immediately stalled.
The petition has been addressed to P K Jha, Principal Chief Conservator of Forests and B Janardhan Reddy, Commissioner, GHMC uploaded on change.org.
Six junctions were to be developed as part of the SRDP and were to witness the construction of multi-layer flyovers, including KBR Park entrance, Jubilee Hills checkpost, Film Nagar junction, Jubilee Hills Road No. 45, Maharaja Agrasen junction (Banjara Hills Road No. 12) and Cancer Hospital junction (Banjara Hills Road No. 10).
However, the petitioner quoted the operative portion of the judgment dated 24.05.2017 passed by the National Green Tribunal in O. A. No. 106 of 2016 and remind the government that “the ESZ is declared by the MoEF & CC, any work in relation to the SRDP project cannot commence near the KBR National Park.” This observation has been made by the Hon’ble Tribunal to ensure that if the activity happens within the ESZ (only if declared), then appropriate clearances can be obtained. It reminds that declaration of ESZ is sub-judice before MoEF & CC. Any act of either construction or cutting/translocating the trees would amount to “Contempt of the Court orders”.
