HYDERABAD: Questions are being raised by environmentalists on how the State Board for Wildlife gave ‘clearance’ to the Strategic Road Development Plan (SRDP) when there is no clarity over KBR park’s eco-sensitive zone (ESZ) itself. SRDP includes construction of multilevel flyovers at six junctions surrounding KBR National Park.
In December 2015, the MoEF had notified ESZ of KBR National Park as 25-35 metres around the park. However, it got lapsed in June, 2017due to not being finalised in 545 days. In between this period of 545 days, Telangana government submitted two more draft notifications, first of reducing the ESZ to 3-7 metres and then to 0 meters. However, till now the MoEF has not taken a final call on what exactly is the ESZ of KBR national park. Even draft notification of KBR national park on the MoEF website is still the old draft notification from 2015.
Another issue is that while the media release claimed that SBWL gave clearance to SRDP project, a note accessed by Express titled, “Brief note on junctions improvement under strategic Road Development Plan (SRDP) outside the KBR National Park, Jubilee Hills, Hyderabad” says that the revised proposal for Eco Sensitive Zone is with District Collector of Hyderabad. It also mentioned that the proposal is placed before SBWL for discussion as per orders of National Green Tribunal. However, the draft notification was not placed in SBWL meeting on Saturday.