Telangana Ministers have built farmhouses in the Full Tank Level (FTL) of twin reservoirs of the city while 80% of lands under G.O. 111 are in the hands of realtors and the government scrapping G.O.111 is to help the realtors and save the ruling party leaders’ constructions, according to a fact-finding committee report of the Telangana Congress.
AICC Kisan Cell vice president M. Kodanda Reddy, who was part of the team, said at a press conference here that water from Himayathsagar was released to save the farmhouses from getting submerged and the BRS government was hell bent on destroying the reservoirs without understanding the history behind their construction.
The fact-finding report submitted to the TPCC president recently argued that the GO 111, dated March 8, 1996, was a legal document and the Government had gone beyond its jurisdiction in repealing the GO. It also recalled that the Government of Telangana in its affidavit in October 2022 stated in the High Court that the GO 111 prohibitions were intact and not removed. Hence without court authority GO 111 cannot be repealed.
Moreover, repealing was contempt of the Supreme Court that dealt with the GO meticulously and had upheld it with the help of three scientific reports and international environmental norms such as ‘Burden of Proof’ and ‘Intergenerational Equity’.
The GO was issued under the delegated authority of Environmental Act 1986 and as such Government of Telangana does not have the authority to repeal the GO. Now, the Government of Telangana could not furnish a single page scientific data to base its decision to repeal the GO. Moreover, consultation was not undertaken with experts and with activists and with citizens or with the opposition parties. Independent institutions were also not taken into consideration.
Charging the government with not revealing information under the Right To Information (RTI) Act, the committee said that RTI applications were submitted to Rangareddy District Collector and Mandal Revenue Officers of seven mandals comprising the 84 villages under GO 111 seeking information regarding the list of assigned lands, government lands, agricultural lands, non-agricultural lands with extent of areas, and survey numbers. But so far there was no reply from the departments concerned.
