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The Supreme Court on Monday, May 18, stayed any tree felling activity around the eco-sensitive zone (ESZ) of Hyderabad’s Kasu Brahmananda Reddy (KBR) national park. The division bench of Justices BV Nagarathna and Ujjal Bhuyan passed the interim order while hearing a petition filed by Kaajal Maheshwari, who challenged an earlier order of the Telangana High Court refusing to grant interim relief.
Last month, the Telangana High Court had refused to grant any stay on ongoing works around KBR park.
The Congress government is undertaking the Hyderabad City Innovative and Transformative Infrastructure (H-CITI) project around the KBR part which includes seven flyovers and seven underpasses. As part of the H-CITI project’s construction, several trees have been chopped down around the ESZ of KBR prompting widespread protests under the banner of ‘Save KBR’. The project was allocated Rs 2,654 crore in the state Budget for 2025-26.
According to the petition, the High Court was informed that unregulated construction activity was continuing in and around the KBR National Park and that urgent intervention was required to prevent irreversible ecological damage. However, the court adjourned the matter to May 5, and owing to court vacations, the matter has not come up for hearing since.
Retention of original ESZ
The SC division bench also retained the original ESZ of 25 to 35 metres as against the later ESZ notification issued by the Union Environment ministry reducing the zone to 3 meters to 29.8 metres. The petitioner had challenged the reduction of the ESZ contending that such a narrow buffer defeats the very purpose of an ESZ as a “shock absorber” for a protected area.
The petitioner contended that between 2012 and 2015, the proposal was to create an eco-sensitive buffer zone of 25 to 35 metres around the park. However, this proposal was allegedly diluted over time by the Telangana government and a final notification issued by the Ministry of Environment, Forest and Climate Change in October 2020 fixed the eco-sensitive zone at a width varying between 3 metres and 29.8 metres around the park boundary.
The petition challenges this reduction as ‘arbitrary, irrational and contrary to the purpose of eco-sensitive zones,’ which are intended to function as ecological “shock absorbers” protecting national parks and wildlife habitats from disruptive external activity.
The petition also alleges procedural irregularities in the decision-making process. It claims that although public objections were received and over 19,000 persons had signed a petition opposing the dilution of environmental protections, these concerns were not meaningfully addressed.