"Peacocks also found in Hyderabad Golf Club, should we declare it forest area too?": Telangana Gov't in 400-acre Kancha Gachibowli land HC hearing

After hearing both sides’ arguments on the Public Interest Litigations (PILs) around the disputed 400-acre land in Kancha Gachibowli, Hyderabad, today, April 2, the Telangana High Court (HC) adjourned the case until tomorrow, March 3.

In the meantime, the Telangana HC Bench, comprising Acting Chief Justice Sujoy Paul and Justice Renuka Yara, ordered that the levelling of trees in the land be stopped till tomorrow.

The petitions, filed by scientist-turned-climate activist Kalapala Babu Rao and environmental body Vata Foundation, challenge the deforestation of the land by the State Government and seek to designate the area as “forest land”.

Arguing for the petitioners, Senior Advocate & Human Rights Lawyer Vasudha Nagraj refers to two judgements by the Supreme Court of India, namely TN Godhavarman Thirumulpad vs Union of India (1996), which broadened the definition of forests to also include public domain jungle areas, and Ashok Kumar Sharma, Indian Forest Service (Retd), and Ors vs Union of India (2024), which upheld this definition after a 2023 amendment to the Forest (Conservation) Act, 1980 attempted to exclude certain forest lands from the act’s protection.

She added that the Government of Telangana, which owns the land did not survey it before levelling down the trees in it, nor did it form an expert committee to demarcate it as forest land.

Referring to state government surveys on the biodiversity of the land, as well as a University of Hyderabad (UoH) newsletter that identified “4 rare species and 455 species of flora and fauna” in the area, Nagraj iterated that the government’s claim of no ecological content on the site must be examined by judicial review.

“We are living on borrowed time,” she said, urging the court to stay the clearing of the land, stating that auctioning the land for fiscal support to the government and razing the green cover on the land would only lead to large-scale ecological imbalance.

Representing the Government of Telangana, Advocate General A Sudarshan Reddy maintained that the state government had full ownership of the disputed land and that it was always intended for industrial use.

Advocate Reddy added that the 400-acre land was never referred to as forest land in Revenue or Forest department records and was marked as “grazing” or “waste” land.

“You cannot call it a forest land just because there are peacocks and mongoose on it. They are present even on the Hyderabad Golf Club’s grounds; should we declare it a forest area?” he retorted, adding that the petitioners “based their entire case on a Google photo.”

He added that the petitioners did not move for the land to be claimed as forest land even as the Telangana High Court ruled that the university lacked legal documents proving ownership of the land in 2022, and the Supreme Court of India upheld it.

After hearing the arguments, the Bench moved to resume the hearing at 2.15 pm tomorrow, April 3 owing to “paucity of time”. In the meanwhile, the counsel for the petitioners sought a pause on the deforestation, which the Attorney General assured orally on the direction of the Bench.