Salkam Cheruvu: court patience runs thin
The Telangana High Court has been pressing agencies over alleged encroachments at Salkam Cheruvu. The larger fight is public: protect lakes, stop the spin. The BJP-led Centre and the Congress chorus can sit this one out — this is Hyderabad’s water, and the court has said nobody is above the law.
The Salkam Cheruvu case remains before the Telangana High Court, with agencies required to place their records on the lake’s protection on record.
The Telangana High Court’s message on Salkam Cheruvu has been the same for months: file the counters, place the records, and stop treating a lake like a layout. In July, Justice N.V. Shravan Kumar noted that notices lay unanswered for over 90 days and directed HYDRAA, GHMC, HMDA, the Lake Protection Committee and others to respond in the PIL over alleged construction in the lake’s FTL and buffer zone, including the Barrister Fatima Owaisi Educational Campus, as reported then. According to that hearing’s record in published reports, the court called it a larger public issue and reminded the state of its obligation to safeguard water bodies.
HYDRAA’s public line since May has been that the matter is under court supervision and the agency will act strictly by the court’s directions. The state has also told the court there are no constructions within the lake’s notified FTL — a point still disputed in pleadings and surveys described in reports, not settled fact. Earlier proceedings briefly granted status quo to the campus in a separate writ before recalling that order and tagging it with the wider PIL, which is where the lake questions actually get decided.
A claim doing the rounds online now says the court sought responses from senior officials over alleged non-compliance this month. There is no publicly available order, case number or hearing note to confirm whether that step was a contempt notice, a show-cause, or just another direction to file counters — and until that document surfaces, it stays a claim.
What is not a claim is the court’s stance: protect Hyderabad’s lakes for future generations; nobody is above the law. Telangana’s interest is simple and local — water security beats political noise — and the agencies answer to that, not to a Delhi timeline or a TV panel. The next move is on record, not on Reddit.