TELANGANA: A PIL has been filed with Telangana High Court with a prayer to declare as illegal, arbitrary and unconstitutional, the authorities’ failure in acting against those who had encroached the land in Survey No. 154 in Balapur village in Rangareddy district. The PIL was filed by a resident of Chandrayangutta in Hyderabad Mohammed Avez Ahmed who said that he was seeking the direction to safeguard and prevent the people from buying the lands which are being sold in the guise of a normal layout which is in fact, an unapproved layout in Kunta.
According to the petitioner, who cited a news report in a newspaper, said that “a bund, which extends over one kilometre and which is roughly 12 feet wide, is being built to protect the houses from the floods in case of rain at a tie when the houses were built in full tank level of a lake (kunta).” He said that the municipality was rebuilding the damaged bund spending Rs 20 lakh sanctioned by the Ranga Reddy District Collector at the instance of Education Minister P Sabitha Indra Reddy.
Jalpally Municipal Commissioner G Praveen Kuma said that some residences are still suffering from the effect of last year’s floods and that the “region is still damaged since the houses are constructed in the lake’s FTL area. We are unable to take any steps to provide a lasting solution since the issue is currently before the High Court.”
The petitioner also claimed that when viewing several water bodies on Google Earth, he saw one that was diminishing by the day. He discovered that it is Survey No. 154 in Balapur, which has six acres and is also designated as a “Kunta”. The petitioner further claimed that Khalid Bin Abdullah, an elected councillor in Jalpally municipality, and his family were attempting to encroach the lake by filling it with rocks and sand and had even built a compound wall around the Kunta to prevent the water’s ingress.
He claimed that locals confirmed the existence of a connecting nala known as ‘Firangi Nala’ that connects the Jalapally lake to this lake. This has been encroached upon by the same family to cut off the inflow into the Kunta.