Encroachment of Lotus Pond in broad daylight

Lotus Pond in Jubilee Hills faces brazen encroachment, despite being a cherished biodiverse oasis near high-profile residences.

The stone paved pathway moves up and down around the elliptical lake obscured by giant trees and thick growth of vegetation on both sides. The compound wall, a combination of stone masonry work and occasionally grilles, plays hide and seek with the walkers.

On the western periphery of the famous lake runs a flight of steps down from the pathway, which is blocked by a few tree branches. Reaching the other side of the branches, if one looks up, one can see a slope of freshly dug up earth devoid of greenery, being filled in by an excavator machine which has entered the premises after breaking the grille and the stone masonry base.

It is tough to believe that the security guard tearing the calm with his whistle as an alert for the visitors to leave, could not hear the whirr of the excavator engine and the sound of crumbling wall at midnight.

Lotus Pond, cherished by the residents of Jubilee Hills and nature lovers for its idyllic aura and biodiversity, is presently witnessing one of the most brazen attempts at encroachment right under the nose of the civic authorities.

Even more shocking is the fact that encroachments into the park have never stopped on the Film Nagar side where the compound wall touches the Road Nos. 11 & 86.

In fact, traces of the stone masonry wall are erased at a few locations, where one can see walls rising in concrete-- clear evidence of realty manufactured from the buffer area of the lake, by pushing in the boundaries. One of the properties is ironically named after the very lake, the area of which it has encroached.

Lotus Pond had been an inconsequential lake where a Dhobhi ghat existed before 1999, when the then Municipal Corporation of Hyderabad had decided to protect it and develop its barren landscape.