Telangana wildlife board gives nod for flyovers around KBR Park.

Decks have almost been cleared to axe or translocate large number of trees to make way for construction of four multi-level flyovers around KBR national park under the Strategic Road Development Project (SRDP), an important flagship programme of the state government.

Telangana State Board for Wildlife (TSSBWL) which met here on Saturday under the chairmanship of forest minister Jogu Ramanna approved the construction of flyovers around the KBR park and the same would be forwarded to National Board for Wildlife (NBWL), Union environment and forests ministry for approval.

The NBWL is likely to meet on July 29 and may give green signal for the SRDP project costing over Rs. 20,000 crore.Environmental activists and residents of the city were up in arms against the GHMC proposal to translocate or chop a few hundred trees around KBR park to make way for the SRDP project.

Even the Hyderabad Metropolitan Development Authority (HMDA) walkway around the park which is used by morning walkers would shrink as the walking pathway width would reduce drastically.

Only after getting approval from the NBWL, the GHMC will go ahead with the construction of four out of eight flyovers around KBR park. They include first level flyover at KBR junction, second flyover at Jubilee Hills check-post junction.

GHMC officials told Express that for the other two proposed multi-flyovers, the construction would be taken up once the eco-sensitive zone of the KBR National Park is fixed in the range of 3 metres to 7 metres as per state government’s request, though the Centre’s proposed eco-sensitive zone for national parks is around 25 to 30 metres.

A draft notification would be issued by the district collector soon fixing the new buffer area of the park. But, HMDA submitted a proposal to lower the range to 3 metres to 7 metres. However, the notification was lapsed due to pending cases in National Green Tribunal (NGT). A fresh notification will be issued soon so that there should not be any issues in near future, GHMC officials added.

THE NEW INDIAN EXPRESS