KBR or Kasu Brahmananda Reddy National Park, situated in the Jubilee Hills area of Hyderabad is in the news as the Telangana government has — yet again — started to fuel its aim of constructing six multilayer flyovers around the city.
The flyover will come up at the cost of axing down trees in the national park, which is a place for the flora and fauna.
Recently, with an aim to ease traffic around KBR Park and provide no signal junctions for commuters heading towards Madhapur, Hi-Tec City, Gachibowli and Kondapur, the Congress-led government has sanctioned flyovers and underpasses around the park.
GHMC (Greater Hyderabad Municipal Corporation) will undertake the works in two phases under the H-CITI project at a cost of ₹826 crore.
The previous Bharat Rashtra Samithi government had announced a similar project under the Strategic Road Development Plan (SRDP) in 2016 but could not proceed due to opposition from locals.
Since then the agenda to preserve the park began.
A city based activist Kaajal Maheshwari and others came together to save the trees. They protested against the then government’s move to make a multi-layer flyover at the cost of the park.
First, they approached the National Green Tribunal and then they reached the high court.
Responding to the petition, in 2021, Chief Justice Hima Kohli and Justice B Vijaysen Reddy asked the state government, the Union Ministry of Environment Forest and Climate Change to furnish details on the number of trees cut and their variety.
It also directed the state government to not cut a single tree until further orders.
However, in 2020, the Union Ministry of Environment and Forests cleared the state government’s proposal to reduce the width of the walkway. It had proposed to finalise the reduction of the park’s walkway from its boundary.
It was learnt that this required axing of over 1,300 trees.
A committee of the ministry had sought a detailed report after conducting a public hearing over the draft notification.
Activist Maheshwari, who had initiated the campaign, namely, ‘Save KBR campaign’ is trying to bring to the forefront that how the government is adopting unethical ways to fulfil its aim, albeit people are voicing their concern regarding the fulfillment of the project which will end up disrupting the ecological structure of the national park.
“My love for trees brought me to the centre of the protest and the campaign associated with this. I have always believed that a good cause yields good results. Our fight to save trees has been going on for nearly seven years. But now since the present government has decided to proceed with the highway project, we will come together to preserve the beauty of the national park by restricting the state dispensation from encroaching on the national park,” said Maheshwari, who, at present, runs a pranic healing centre in Hyderabad.
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