Making it clear that “not a single tree” in the 400 acres adjacent to the University of Hyderabad should be felled, the Supreme Court on Wednesday sought a plan on restoration of the ecology in the 100 acres that were denuded of green cover recently.
"You (state government) have to come up with a plan as to how you will restore those 100 acres if you want your chief secretary to be saved from any severe action. The better course would be to come up with a plan to restore the forest,” a bench of Justice BR Gavai and Justice Augustine George Masih told senior advocate Abhishek Manu Singhvi appearing for Telangana.
Singhvi told the court that all activities in the area in question have been stopped. He also said fake images of elephants were being circulated. At the outset, Singhvi told the bench that the Central Empowered Committee (CEC) has filed a voluminous report in the matter and the state needed some time to respond to it. The bench granted four weeks to Telangana to file its response to the CEC's report, stated a report by The New Indian Express.
During the course of the hearing, senior advocate K Parameshwar, appearing as amicus curiae, said the land has been mortgaged to a private party.
To this, the bench said, “We are not on mortgage and all. We are only on how so many trees were chopped off without the permission of the state government. We are only on dozens of bulldozers and forests of a hundred acres being destroyed. If you wanted to do something you should have sought proper permissions."
Expressing serious concern over the environmental damage due to the felling of a large number of trees on the land, the bench made it clear that it would go out of the way for the protection of environment and ecology and fixed the matter for further hearing after four weeks, on May 15.
The court, which took suo motu cognisance of the tree felling drive, had earlier asked the state government to explain the "compelling urgency" for clearing the land parcel, and stayed any future activity till further orders, according to the report by The New Indian Express.
"In the meantime, not a single more tree would be felled there," the bench orally said.
