KTR: HYDRAA goes overboard
At a Delhi presser, K.T. Rama Rao vowed to scrap HYDRAA on “day one” if BRS returns, calling it the Congress regime’s blunt instrument. The court record has already put HYDRAA on a short leash; the budget shows it’s very much a state body.
HYDRAA’s powers face scrutiny in court and in the state budget.
K.T. Rama Rao said in New Delhi that a future BRS government would “pick up HYDRAA and throw it into the Bay of Bengal” on day one, and alleged the agency is being used by the Congress government in Telangana as Chief Minister Revanth Reddy’s “blackmail and extortion tool.” The remarks were carried from a post-meeting press conference after KTR met Union Minister Ashwini Vaishnaw, with BRS MPs Vaddiraju Ravichandra and D. Damodar Rao present. According to that report, KTR also accused HYDRAA of targeting poor residents while sparing the well-connected — allegations he levelled at specific political names — which we record as his claims pending documentary evidence.
HYDRAA is not a ghost outfit: the state’s own Municipal Administration budget for 2025–26 carries a Rs 100 crore estimate for it. And the legal heat around it is real. The Telangana High Court, in a contempt row over disputed land at Lothukunta, ordered HYDRAA Commissioner A.V. Ranganath’s replacement after rejecting an apology, following earlier hearings where the court criticised repeated interference despite directions. KTR’s flourish that the court called HYDRAA a “nine‑headed poisonous snake” is his characterisation; the accessible reports do not quote that line from the bench.
The Congress government in Telangana has not bothered to answer KTR’s core charge of selective enforcement and political misuse. HYDRAA’s own demolition and enforcement record, and official boundary and permission documents for the properties he named, would settle this quicker than a slogan. Until then, the High Court has already done more to discipline HYDRAA than the Congress has managed to explain.