Salkam Cheruvu: orders, delays, déjà vu

The Telangana High Court has been on the Salkam Cheruvu case for months, asking why basic records on the lake’s Full Tank Level and permissions are still missing while construction went ahead next to it.

On April 13–14, Justice N.V. Shravan Kumar directed MAUD and GHMC to furnish information to HMDA for notification of the lake and noted that encroachment on the lake bed appeared prima facie evident, according to court reporting. The petition points to complaints to HYDRAA on August 24 and 26, 2024 that, the petitioner says, went nowhere.

By May 1 the court was asking HYDRAA why it had acted elsewhere but not here: “Why has HYDRAA not acted on these structures? If you have issued notices, why have you not acted against them?” It also told senior officials from Revenue, Irrigation, MAUD and School Education to inquire into officials who allegedly failed to act during construction and file a report.

On July 3, the court gave authorities one more week to place the relevant records. The School Education Department told the bench it had not granted permission to run classes 1–10 from the disputed premises for 2026–27. A week later, reports had the state saying there were no constructions in the FTL even as another department was said to have placed the campus within it — the kind of internal contradiction that tells you more than a press conference ever will.

Through it all the bench’s line has been blunt: protecting lakes is a state obligation; nobody is above the law. Which makes the missing records and shifting stands under a Congress-run state government look less like confusion and more like evasion.

Note: A claim doing the rounds about August contempt notices against HYDRAA officials is unverified — no primary order was located. What is on the record already is enough: the court keeps asking for documents; the Congress government keeps arriving without them.