Hyderabad: The Musi Jan Andolan (MJA), a collective of civil society organisations, on Saturday, March 14, issued a point-by-point rebuttal of the Musi Riverfront Improvement Challenge’s Part 1 Detailed Challenge Report (DPR), alleging that the mission’s actual goal could also be to produce water to information centres being arrange in Hyderabad relatively than to rejuvenate the river.
Addressing media individuals a day after Chief Minister A Revanth Reddy unveiled the DPR at Resort Taj Krishna in Hyderabad, MJA flagged what it known as a “Freudian slip” in his speech, noting that the CM had in the identical tackle spoken of a severe groundwater disaster going through the town after which remarked on how the Musi mission would allow a steady water provide to international information centres.
“In a single breath, the Chief Minister poignantly identified that the town is going through a severe groundwater disaster. Within the very subsequent breath, he remarked how water is required for international information centres and the way the Musi mission will allow these information centres with steady provide of water,” the collective stated.
MJA additionally questioned the proposal to construct barrages on the river, arguing that one can not search to revive a river to its “pure heritage” whereas concurrently “arresting it as if it had been a small canal for boating.”
It famous that regardless of the federal government’s emphasis on the Nationwide River Conservation Plan and the Central Water Fee’s technical pointers on flood plain xoning of July 2025, it was lacking an important level that “the river is a residing entity.”
Air pollution, not infrastructure, is the true drawback
On the plan to pump water from the Godavari to Osmansagar, MJA stated this was not rejuvenation however a expensive, energy-intensive and unsustainable method that ignored the basis trigger, that’s, air pollution. Concrete embankments, it warned, wouldn’t management floods however worsen the danger by narrowing the channel, rising water velocity and eliminating pure floodplains.
The MJA additionally took intention on the authorities’s proposal to arrange sewage remedy crops (STP) as an answer to the river’s air pollution, declaring that STPs deal with solely sewage and municipal waste and can’t deal with poisonous industrial effluents. “Effluent Remedy Crops are wanted for treating industrial effluent,” it stated, noting that neither the Musi River Entrance Improvement Company Restricted (MRDCL) Managing Director nor the Chief Minister had outlined any technique to curtail industrial discharge into the river.
Referring to Revanth Reddy’s and senior bureaucrats’ visits to riverfront initiatives in London, Paris, Singapore and South Korea, MJA stated the federal government appeared to have missed probably the most primary lesson from these success tales, that rivers just like the Thames and the Singapore River had been cleaned up solely after industrial and municipal air pollution was utterly stopped first.
Professional-poor claims ring hole, says MJA
MJA additionally challenged the Chief Minister’s claims of being pro-poor, recalling the “arbitrary and inhumane demolitions” of over 300 homes in Shankar Nagar, Malakpet and different areas of the Previous Metropolis in October 2024. “Thus far, there are pending grievances in Prajavani on incomplete rehabilitation,” it stated.
The collective additional known as out MRDCL for presenting differing estimations of the price of Part 1 to the State Atmosphere Impression Evaluation Authority, in addition to conflicting figures on the variety of households probably affected by displacement.
MJA additionally famous that Hyderabad’s 1908 floods had led to the constructing of reservoirs for a purpose, and that fashionable finest practices favoured wetlands, retention areas and preserved floodplains, not concrete-heavy riverfronts that intensify local weather change, city warmth, destroy vegetation and scale back groundwater recharge.
Gandhi, secularism and ‘symbolic’ faith
The collective additionally criticised the federal government for invoking Mahatma Gandhi to justify an ecologically unwise and financially extravagant mission. “Gandhi didn’t imagine in exorbitance and extravagance, whereas the proposed Gandhi Sarovar and Musi Riverfront are premised on lavish infrastructure that might come at large social and ecological prices,” MJA stated.
It additionally expressed sturdy objection to MRDCL’s framing of secularism as a justification for constructing a temple, church, mosque and gurudwara on the riverbanks. “Displacement and imprudent monetary funding shouldn’t be the heavy value for such symbolic secularism,” it stated.
MJA known as for an total evaluate of the mission and a complete evaluation of its social, ecological and monetary prices.
