HC notice to HYDRAA chief, others over Salkam Cheruvu encroachment

According to the contempt petition, the Hyderabad Collector, the GHMC and the HYDRAA commissioner had misled the High Court during a July 9 hearing by producing a memo that redrew the full tank level of the lake.

Hyderabad: The Telangana High Court on Friday, August 8, issued contempt notices to five senior IAS and IPS officers, including special chief secretary Jayesh Ranjan and HYDRAA commissioner AV Ranganath, after they allegedly withheld information about illegal constructions on Salkam Cheruvu lake bed in Bandlaguda, where the Barrister Fatima Owaisi Educational Campus, run by All India Majlis-e-Ittehadul Muslimeen (AIMIM) MLA Akbaruddin Owaisi’s Salaar-e-Millat Educational Trust, is located.

Justice NV Shravan Kumar, hearing the contempt case filed by advocate Vijay Gopal, also issued notices to principal secretaries Yogitha Rana (education), E Sridhar (irrigation) and Lokesh Kumar (revenue), and allowed the petitioner to implead the Hyderabad district collector. The matter was posted to August 11.

Gopal alleged wilful disobedience of the court’s April 30 order, saying the officials had failed to submit a detailed inquiry report into the permissions granted to the educational institution and the action taken against erring officials, invoking Sections 10 to 12 of the Contempt of Courts Act, 1971.

According to the contempt petition, the Hyderabad Collector, the GHMC and the HYDRAA commissioner had misled the High Court during a July 9 hearing by producing a memo, USR 8 of 2026, that redrew the full tank level of the lake, even though the matter had already been settled by the courts and the entire extent of land in Survey No. 62 had been declared lake land.

Gopal cited a 2017 report by an earlier Hyderabad district collector confirming the same position to the High Court in a separate lake encroachment matter. He also referred to orders of the Special Court for Land Grabbing Cases in 1988 and subsequent High Court rulings, including in Writ Petition 27803 of 1997 and AS No 968 of 2010, which had recognised Survey No 62 as government lake land and rejected private claims over the property.

The petitioner argued that the appellate judgment in AS No. 968 of 2010, which had declared the entire extent of Survey No. 62 as government lake land and held its sub-division legally untenable, had attained finality, a position an earlier district collector had also submitted before the court in PIL No 220 of 2015 concerning encroachments on Salkam Cheruvu.

“These facts ought to have been disclosed before the High Court by the said officers, but they filed Memo USR 8 of 2026 asserting that portions of Survey No. 62 were outside the FTL, despite earlier judicial findings to the contrary,” Gopal said. He alleged the officials had attempted to create an impression that the schools, colleges and other constructions on the site were outside the FTL.

The case is part of a broader, months-long dispute over alleged encroachments on Salkam Cheruvu, during which the state has shifted its position more than once on whether the educational campus falls within the lake’s notified limits.