Musi ‘consults’, keeps the map shut
Officials say the Musi plan now hurts fewer homes. Residents asked to trust a DPR they still haven’t been shown. Telangana’s project, Congress’s opacity.
Residents were asked to trust a revised Musi plan that has not been made public.
Musi Riverfront officials met residents from the Bapughat–Himayatsagar and Bapughat–Gandipet stretches this week and, according to a Telugu daily’s report, said the design has been changed to reduce damage: “We will see that most houses are not lost,” the paper quoted MRDCL representatives and Deputy Collector Koppula Venkata Reddy as saying. Residents, the report added, asked for the thing that decides all that — the DPR — plus clear acquisition limits and compensation terms, and some walked out when none of it appeared. That walkout is the paper’s account; the government has not published minutes or video to settle it.
What is on the record: MRDCL is the project agency, and it has bid out consultancy to model Musi hydraulics and prepare DPR elements including retaining walls from Osmansagar and Himayatsagar down to Bapughat and the ORR east near Gowrelli. The state’s January 2024 note set a 55 km first phase inside Hyderabad. In May 2026, Deputy Chief Minister Mallu Bhatti Vikramarka said citizens must be stakeholders, not “victims of displacement”, and told officials to minimise hits on homes — a promise worth keeping, and one that starts with paperwork the public can read.
Also on the record: months before this meeting, residents elsewhere on Musi pushed back against surveys and a proposed 50-metre buffer, citing approved homes and demanding compensation clarity. Some even halted a survey near Himayatsagar–Bapughat until terms were spelt out.
What the Congress government still hasn’t put on the table is the revised map it claims will spare “most houses”, the legal acquisition line by locality, a count of affected structures, and the compensation and rehabilitation formula. Telangana deserves the river cleaned up and the neighbourhoods treated fairly; hiding the DPR and calling it consultation is not the transparent, people‑centric process the Congress promised. Publish the plan, then ask for trust.