Hyderabad: AICC in-charge for Telangana Meenakshi Natarajan arrived in Hyderabad Saturday and held consultations with a group of ministers (GoM) and representatives of the party’s student wing, NSUI, at the Hyderabad Central University over 400 acres of disputed land in Kancha Gachibowli, the city’s IT hub.
Natarajan’s previously unscheduled visit and involvement in the talks are being seen as an indirect intervention by Congress leader Rahul Gandhi in an episode that has put the party on the backfoot over a sensitive issue involving both students and ecology.
BRS senior leaders, including K.T. Rama Rao and Harish Rao, have called out the hypocrisy of Rahul Gandhi’s silence on the matter in comparison to his vocal stance against the clearance of Mumbai’s Aarey forest for the metro project.
In a letter to the Congress leader Friday, former minister Harish Rao said that “while he (Rahul Gandhi) consistently stood against the ‘bulldozer raj’ across India,” the party’s chief minister in Telangana destroyed 100 acres of flora, disturbing the habitat of numerous endangered species, with help of bulldozers.
The issue, raging for over a week now, started after the Revanth Reddy government began clearance work, including felling trees, on the 400 acres of forest-like land. It is part of the over 2,500 acres allocated five decades ago by the united Andhra Pradesh government to set up the central university.
The Congress government planned to auction the section to set up more IT parks in the Gachibowli area.
The HCU has received support from student bodies from across India, including Jawaharlal Nehru University (JNU) and Osmania University (OU), opposition parties of BJP, BRS, and CPM, public groups, intellectuals and activists.
They have been up in arms, saying that the patch, contiguous with HCU, with serene lakes and rock formations, is a rare green cover in the city serving as lung space and a refuge for wildlife.
As the visuals of scores of bulldozers clearing the trees and shrubs, while protesting HCU students were packed off in police vans last weekend led to a national outcry, the Supreme Court took suo moto cognisance of the large-scale deforestation Thursday and halted all such activities on the 400 acres till further orders.
Asking the state government to explain the “compelling urgency” to clear the forest-like land at an alarming pace over the weekend amid festive holidays, the bench of Justices B.R. Gavai and Augustine George Masih sought a report by 16 April.
The Telangana High Court, too, is hearing a set of petitions against the government’s action.
Following the SC order, CM Revanth Reddy announced the constitution of a three-member ministerial group to consult with HCU’s executive committee and joint action committee, civil society groups, students’ delegation, and other stakeholders “to resolve and give a way forward in Kancha Gachibowli land issue”.
Revanth Reddy announced the group, comprising Deputy CM Bhatti Vikramarka, IT and Industries Minister Sridhar Babu, and Revenue Minister Ponguleti Srinivas Reddy, in a post on X Thursday.
Speaking to reporters after meeting with the GoM, headed by Bhatti, at the state secretariat late Saturday, Natarajan said, “A ministers committee was formed so that a middle path can be arrived at after consultations with various stakeholders, including eminent citizens.”
The former MP said she is in Hyderabad to hear from all sides in the next 2-3 days and get a 360-degree view of the issue. She expressed hope that a solution could be reached from from discussions.
Natarajan said that she has always been an advocate of student rights and environmental issues. “Congress and Rahul ji are firmly committed to protecting the environment and upholding people’s rights.”
She reportedly also met CM Revanth to convey the party’s point of view.
Natarajan, Rahul Gandhi’s confidante, later met with NSUI and Youth Congress representatives at the Gandhi Bhavan, the Telangana Pradesh Congress Committee (TPCC) headquarters. State party sources said she will hold meetings with public groups and social activists Monday. Once back in Delhi, she will submit a report to the party’s high command.
Eco-park to replace IT park plans?
Natarajan’s consultations, running parallel to that of GoM, are also underway even as a section of the media reported that, in light of the strong opposition, the Revanth Reddy government has decided to drop the idea of carrying out an auction of the disputed land for IT parks.
Instead, reports further claimed that the state is planning an eco-park in the entire 2,000-odd acres, including the larger area where the HCU campus stands while offering the university 100 acres and Rs 1,000 crore in support of building a new campus in another location.
While declining to confirm the reports, an official in the CMO said, “Let us see if the students, opposition forces, will be the good environmentalists and wildlife lovers they claim to be now and vacate the campus for the so-called forest to grow further and the animals to roam free the entire stretch.”
The official claimed vested interests were operating with an obstructionist agenda to stall economic growth projects initiated by the CM.
Meanwhile, Revanth Reddy Saturday held a review of the court cases pertaining to Kancha Gachibowli lands.
Citing the present opposition to forest clearance to make way for IT parks, officials informed the CM that, in the last 25 years, several large structures, including the Indian School of Business (ISB), Gachibowli Stadium, International Institute of Information Technology (IIIT), some private buildings, residential apartments, and additional HCU buildings, were constructed in the Kancha Gachibowli lands, but “there were no disputes, controversies or concerns for wildlife conservation nor any environmental issues at that time”, according to the CMO.
Police officials, according to a CMO statement, attributed the nationwide furore over the present land clearance to “some fake videos and photos of crying peacocks and injured deer running away” created by vested interests using artificial intelligence and their wide circulation on social media to further fuel disapproval.
The meeting noted that Union Minister Kishan Reddy, former Telangana minister Jagadish Reddy, YouTuber Dhruv Rathee, film celebrities John Abraham, Dia Mirza, and Raveena Tandon “sent wrong message to the society uploading such fake videos and photos on their social media handles believing them to be true”.
While ordering top cops to strengthen the cybercrime department to prevent such tech-enabled propaganda from recurring, CM Revanth instructed the officials to appeal in the court on behalf of the state to order an inquiry into the creation of fake AI-generated content “which has misled the society” in the Kancha Gachibowli lands matter.
(Edited by Sanya Mathur)
