At dawn, the Indian Grey Hornbill cruises over the Jubilee Hills police checkpost, five to 12 metres above the road, following a flight corridor that hornbills have used for longer than the city has existed. By 2028, if the Hyderabad City Innovative and Transformative Infrastructure (HCITI) project proceeds as tendered, four flyovers between 10 and 14 metres high will cut through this same airspace. 

However, the ecological concern extends beyond just those four structures. The HCITI is a large urban transport and road-infrastructure programme being executed by the Greater Hyderabad Municipal Corporation (GHMC) with a budget of nearly Rs 1,100 crore. It includes seven flyovers and seven underpasses encircling the Kasu Brahmananda Reddy (KBR) National Park. 

KBR National Park is one of India’s rare protected urban forests embedded within a dense metropolitan core, frequently described by courts and public, as the last remaining “lungs of the city”. Spread over roughly 390-400 acres in Jubilee Hills, the park contains dry deciduous vegetation, granitic rock ecosystems, recharge zones, and a surprisingly diverse urban wildlife population including Indian Grey Hornbills, peafowl, civets, monitor lizards, parakeets, owls, raptors, and pollinator species. The park functions not merely as a recreational green space, but as a climate-regulating ecological core for western Hyderabad, moderating temperatures, enabling groundwater recharge, reducing particulate pollution, and serving as a biological refuge within one of India’s fastest-growing urban heat islands. 

The question Hyderabad has not asked is what do seven simultaneous road projects do to a 400-acre National Park?

The answer, garnered from the Greater Hyderabad Municipal Corporation (GHMC) tender documents, is alarming. The combined package-I and package-II tenders, issued on December 27, 2024, describe Rs 1,090 crore worth of infrastructure. The structural deck spans 79,723 square metres, equivalent to 11 FIFA football grounds of concrete placed 12 metres high, made using 29,305 tonnes of cement. The project got 1,942 mature trees approved for felling in a single sitting of the Tree Protection Committee on April 29, 2025, and 332 properties acquired under an emergency clause that bypassed mandatory public hearings and social impact assessment entirely. On May 18, The Supreme Court stayed any tree felling activity around the eco-sensitive zone (ESZ) of Hyderabad’s KBR national park.

Moreover, the flyovers and underpasses will cause canopy........

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