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“If tomorrow the tahsildar of Charminar asks you to supply men and machinery to demolish the High Court, who is at fault?”
The question hung in the courtroom.
It was September 30, 2024 and Justice K Lakshman of the Telangana High Court was questioning AV Ranganath, the senior police officer heading the then newly formed Hyderabad Disaster Response and Asset Protection Agency (HYDRAA).
Just over two months earlier, Telangana Chief Minister Revanth Reddy had created HYDRAA with an ambitious mandate: identify and remove illegal structures and encroachments across the Greater Hyderabad region, especially those encroaching on lake beds, government lands and parks. HYDRAA was also tasked with restoring lakes in the city. The agency has quickly become synonymous with bulldozers and demolitions, earning both praise and criticism.
The court was asking Ranganath to explain one of those demolitions, the first of many to follow.
Eight days earlier, on a Saturday morning, HYDRAA officials had arrived in Kistareddypet village in Ameenpur and brought down three structures. Ranganath’s explanation was simple: HYDRAA was not acting entirely on its own; it had only supplied the men and machinery. The local Mandal Revenue Officer (MRO), P Radha, had sought HYDRAA’s assistance, Ranganath told the court.
Finding the answer far from satisfactory, an irked Justice Lakshman asked the rhetorical question on Charminar. Radha, too, came in for criticism. This was one of the first instances where HYDRAA was slammed in the High Court and parallely in the court of public opinion. Since then, many instances have followed.
An entity initially viewed with fascination, HYDRAA has since acquired notoriety across what the Revanth government has named the Telangana Core Urban Region (CURE), encompassing Hyderabad and the urban area around it up to the city’s Outer Ring Road (ORR).
The agency’s bulldozers have become a familiar sight, tearing down structures it alleges have encroached on lakes, government land and other public assets, while raising a more fundamental question: where does HYDRAA’s power to demolish begin and where does accountability for those demolitions end?
HYDRAA and its Commissioner Ranganath first drew widespread awe when, barely a month after the agency was formed, its officials demolished Telugu superstar Nagarjuna’s N Convention Centre, a venue that had hosted weddings and other events for some of Hyderabad’s most prominent families.
The demolitions did not stop there. Among the structures brought down early on were an under-construction building owned by renewable energy company Greenko Group, a convention hall operated by Sandhya Conventions, and Oro Sports Village, an event space associated with the family of former Union Minister Pallam Raju. More recently, structures allegedly linked to AIMIM leaders Mohammed Mubeen and Mirza Rahmat Baig in Bhumruq Dowla lake were also demolished.
But beyond the prominent names, HYDRAA has faced criticism and judicial scrutiny over demolitions that affected ordinary residents, including low income families living in sheds.
Revanth has repeatedly defended the project against suggestions that the demolitions are driven by political or personal considerations. In a speech in August 2025, he framed the campaign as an effort to create a legacy for future generations, arguing that those who build lasting public infrastructure are remembered. “What we earn may evade us (sampadinchindi), but what we give to people lasts (samajanikichindi),” he said.
Two years on, HYDRAA’s performance is difficult to clearly demarcate as either environmental restoration or arbitrary demolitions.
While Commissioner AV Ranganath invokes utilitarian philosophy to justify the agency’s actions, an examination of HYDRAA’s record, from the High Court’s damning observations to the shattered homes in Ameenpur and Sunnam Cheruvu, raises an important question. The city needs solutions to rescue it from recurring and battering floods, but can the state’s rush for environmental justice systematically bypass due process, leaving the most vulnerable to pay the price?
One revenue official’s high-handedness
It was in Ameenpur’s Kistareddypet that three structures were demolished in September 2024, which brought Commissioner Ranganath before Justice Lakshman in the High Court, who questioned where responsibility lay when a demolition went wrong.
Nearly two years on, in July 2026, TNM returned to Ameenpur and met Madhusudan to trace what happened before, during and after the demolition.
“The demolition took only three hours – from 9.30 pm to 12.30 am. Its consequences have lasted far longer,” Madhusudan told TNM.
He paused before adding: “And all this because I refused to pay a bribe.”
Madhusudan alleged that Radha, the MRO, repeatedly pressured him to pay a bribe in exchange for not interfering with the construction of his four-floor residential building.
Radha also sought HYDRAA’s assistance in demolishing the structures of two other residents of Kistareddypet: Kalyan and Dr Rafi, a paediatrician whose hospital now lies in a heap of debris.
To support his account, Madhusudan brought out a stack of documents: his khasra pahani (land records in rural Telangana and Andhra that identify ownership), revenue records, sale deed and the Layout Regularisation Scheme (LRS) approval issued by the Andhra Pradesh government in 2013.