Hyderabad: Land sharks encroach Jalpally water bodies, govt lands

Rangareddy: Taking advantage of the arguably lawless state of the municipality in Jalpally, a number of water bodies and government lands were allegedly found being grabbed by the land sharks in cahoots with the municipal staff.

With swaths of government lands coupled with a number of unprotected lakes spread across Jalpally, the municipality is considered a haven of land sharks running organised syndicates that have a nexus with the municipal staff, from low-level to upper rank serving in both regular and outsourcing domains.

Famous water bodies such as Jalpally Tank, Jalpally Kunta, Talla Kunta Cheruvu, Erra Kunta Cheruvu, and Burhankhan Lake fall under the Jalpally municipality limits, making it an Urban Local Body (ULB) with numerous unsafe water bodies. Many of these have been encroached upon or vanished completely. Local residents claim that irrigation authorities are either acting as mute spectators or colluding with land sharks.

A two-kilometre-long symbiotically joined water body called Jalpally Tank and Jalpally Kunta shares the boundaries with three different areas, such as Laxmiguda in Rajendranagar, Bandlaguda in Chandrayangutta, and Erra Kunta area in Jalpally municipality. However, the major part of the HMDA-designated joint water body, having ID Nos 3600 and 3602, falls under Jalpally jurisdiction.

Over the years, the size of these joint water bodies has shrunk significantly as encroachments almost from all sides choked these aquaresources to such an extent that access from different sides was closed either partially or completely.

During the last three months, several new encroachments over the joint water bodies and their adjacent government land were witnessed. New basements were found on the government land adjacent to the Jalpally Lake in the Wadi-e-Mustafa area under ward no 21, where a garbage treatment plant existed six months ago.

During the term of Municipal Commissioner Vasanta, a legacy waste disposal unit was set up on government land in the Wadi-e-Mustafa area under ward no 21. The facility was located adjacent to Jalpally Lake, just a stone's throw away from the municipal office. The unit was established with the aim of collecting and treating the refuse being collected from the municipality area.

However, it is learnt that, upon completion of the contract, the machinery was carted away by the contracting agency, leaving a complete open area behind that was now found to be allegedly encroached upon by the land sharks. Ironically, Municipal Commissioner Vasantha Reddy was transferred and replaced by Municipal Commissioner Vani Reddy three months ago.

Lashing out at the irrigation authorities over their blind eye towards safeguarding the water bodies in Jalpally, Osman Al-Hajri, the senior congress leader, said, “Despite the fact that both the reservoirs are identified as protected water resources by the HMDA marked with separate IDs, the land sharks having political patronage managed to encroached upon and carried out void-ab-initio transactions over the FTL areas of both the water resources.”