HYDERABAD: Voicing concerns over ‘marked differences’ in the State government’s language and approach towards GO 111, which protects two historic water reservoirs in Hyderabad, activists have highlighted a 2016 government order. The MA&UD department had issued GO 839 in 2016 to constitute a three-member committee tasked to study the ‘role of Himayatsagar and Osmansagar reservoirs’ in supplying water to the city, their ‘alternate uses’, and ‘regulatory mechanisms’ to protect them.
The committee included former Special Chief Secretary for Panchayat Raj SP Singh, former Special Chief Secretary for Irrigation SK Joshi and former MD of HMWSSB Dana Kishore. It was set up after an activist, Thakur Rajkumar Singh, had filed a petition with the National Green Tribunal against over 12,000 encroachments within 10-km radius of the reservoirs. GO 111 had declared the area as protected zone. The committee was even given 45 days to furnish a report.
Interestingly, in its report, the committee did not use the word ‘encroachment’ to describe illegal structure in the protected areas. Instead, it said ‘study of existing developments, which have taken place in the 84 notified villages.’
“The government never submitted the report even as NGT asked them to furnish the same multiple times. Ultimately, with no counter response from the government on the encroachments, the NGT closed the case,” explained Singh. Now, the language appears to be shifting from questioning ‘role of the reservoirs’ to directly ‘abolishing the GO’, activists have noted.
“The Chief Minister’s recent address in the State Assembly has made it look like the committee is preparing a report on how to get rid of the GO instead of conserving the reservoirs,” said Narasimhar Reddy D, a renowned activist working on the issue.
The CM in fact stated that one of the things the committee should do is plan how development can take place in the protected zone ‘after the GO is abolished’. There was no question of abolishing the GO 111 when the committee was formed in 2016.