As dusk sets in over Hyderabad, Durgam Cheruvu begins to perform – surrounded by heights, drenched in lights, driven by music – offering a carefully crafted spectacle to those watching from above. From the rooftop restaurant on the fourth floor, the surface of the lake sparkles like a garland of diamonds, the suspension bridge above it glows in tricolor and trance music flows in the open air. Diners sat down, drinks in hand, mesmerized by the view.
“Within 10 minutes, the smell fades from the mind and the view becomes thrilling. Then we get lost in the conversation,” says a second-time visitor to the restaurant-cum-bar.
On the other hand, at the sailing point, visitors stand in queue for a speedboat ride – ₹500 for 25 minutes – while floating in the water with a view of Gurrapudekka (water hyacinth). The pilot navigates the boat with practiced ease, but the smell of rotting organic matter is overwhelming.
“We had resumed sailing only a week ago. We had to stop sailing operations as visitors were complaining of foul smell and the water became unfit for navigation. It took us 20 days to clean it up Gurrapudekka“says a Telangana Tourism official.
Between the spectacular spectacle of leisure, built around expensive restaurants and the carefully staged stunning view of the lake, and the nausea-inducing reality of decay lies the paradox of the inaccessible Cheruvu. One of the few large water bodies to survive decades of pressure from builders and official interventions, it is still quietly being transformed: its water level has been lowered and its banks reshaped to free up land.
The mechanics of that damage are visible on the southern shore of the lake. Descending some stairs towards the sluice gate, an irrigation department official recalls a moment from the last monsoon which, he suggests, changed the behavior of the lake.
“In the last monsoon, the dam of the lake was dug to lay a new pipe to release water. It was dug after the water level rose. Earlier, it used to rise to this level,” he says, pointing to a mark about two meters above the current waterline. This figure matches closely with readings from cellphone altimeters and elevation maps of the area. On the Deccan Plateau, a two-metre drop in water level does not merely lower the coastline; It exposes acres of land around a lake. Land that has already been encroached upon with the construction of a high dam.
For the scale and history of the inaccessible Cheruvu Lake, the implications are profound. Once a source of drinking water and reservoir that filled the moat surrounding Golconda Fort, its full tank level has been repeatedly changed to drain the land. Historical records, anecdotes and old photographs reveal continual manipulation of the lake level over decades, cumulatively lowering it by about two metres. The old sluice gate on the southern side provides physical evidence of this change. The original full tank level of the lake, 560.1 meters above sea level, matches the water tanks in the upper reaches of Golconda Fort, allowing water to flow by gravity. After the 2015 intervention of the Jal Board, the sluice gate is now at 558 metres.
Sajjad Shahid, a Hyderabad-based historian and engineer, says, “Some very powerful people built houses around the lake. When lake water entered their houses during the monsoon, they forced the authorities to release the water. Then there is the issue of the disappearance of natural flow channels for rain and storm water. Now only sewage enters it regularly.” His statement has also been confirmed by the Irrigation Department official.
“I close and open the valves whenever I am instructed to do so,” says the official, who has worked in the irrigation department for the past 40 years. “Earlier, water was allowed to reach this place before opening the valves. The excess water would flow out of the channel next to the mosque and flow towards Malkam Cheruvu. Now, all the water is released through this sluice gate and there are two other pipelines where the water is automatically released.”
construction mania
Shahid remembers a completely different lake from the one that exists today. In the early 1980s, he says, the water was crystal blue and the surrounding area was largely empty. He says, “It would be hard to believe that these areas were just pieces of land. The few who had built houses there reported frequent thefts. Then the Jubilee Hills Housing Society threatened open plot owners to build houses, failing which the land would be taken back. This triggered frenzied construction activity.”
Most of the housing colonies grew manifold between 1995 and 2020, driven by the IT boom generated by Hi-Tech City, Cyber Towers and the formation of Cyberabad Development Authority (CDA) on January 20, 2001. Shahid argues that the water level of the lake is now deliberately kept low to ensure that rich residents living on its banks are not inconvenienced.
Recently, the Hyderabad Disaster Response and Property Protection Agency (HYDRAA) announced that it has evicted the encroachers who had converted a part of the lake into a parking lot. But even before the signage put up by the enforcement agency could dry, the fencing erected at the site was moved aside using earthmovers – so that the hyacinth could be removed with de-weeders and bucket excavators. “We charge ₹2.5 lakh per month and ₹10,000 per day for grass removal. If we don’t clean it regularly, the grass will completely cover the lake again in 20 days,” says the contractor carrying out the cleaning drive.
There is a measurable source of pollution fueling the lake’s degradation. The 7 MLD (million liters per day) sewage treatment plant on the northern bank of the inaccessible Cheruvu releases about 10 lakh cubic meters of treated water into the lake every 10 days (data is not available for the older 5 MLD plant).
Visualized differently, the discharge is equivalent to a 100 meter square water tower, with a coliform count of 430 MPN (most probable number) per 100 ml. The data tell a contradictory story: the water meets some clean water standards with a chemical oxygen demand of 40 mg/L, while its biological oxygen demand is 3 mg/L, making it unsuitable for wildlife and even marine life. This is organically loaded water, which is continuously released into the lake, which promotes rapid growth of water hyacinth.
The engineering solution to stop this flow has been known for more than a decade. Thirteen years ago, the first proposal and approval was given for construction of interception and diversion structures in Madhapur and Silent Valley drains as well as construction of a ring dam and laying of a ring main in the inaccessible Cheruvu. The cost of the first phase of diversion of sewage entering the lake was estimated to be ₹35 crore. Since then, funds have been sanctioned under various schemes, but the result has been contrary to the objective: the lake has shrunk by 160.6 acres, and its water quality is continuously deteriorating.
In February 2015, a channel was built across the inaccessible Cheruvu to enable outflow, one of the earliest major interventions to lower the lake’s water level. | Photo Courtesy: Serish Nanisetty
However, one thing has changed in the past year: fear. In the lakeside colonies, the concern with official markings has largely disappeared. “Most of the residents have erased the markers made by the authorities. Only a faded marker remains,” says Srinivasulu, who has worked as a watchman at a lakeside villa for 11 years.
The contrast with the past is profound. William Methwold, after visiting Hyderabad in 1622, wrote, “In the gardens attached to the palaces, canals meandered through them, and the premises were filled with fountains and ponds. The palaces were built on a plateau and were harmoniously arranged with the springs and fountains surrounding the main structure. Fountains were placed in beautiful places all around.”
Nearly 400 years later, residents around Durgam Cheruvu sit behind mosquito nets, light joss sticks and close the windows when the wind blows to keep out the insects. Inside the Last House coffee shop, mosquitoes the size of tiny coins buzz and bite diners.
game of power
In August 2024, the Tehsildar of Serilingampally Municipality issued notices to 240 house and property owners around Durgam Cheruvu, invoking Section 23 of Water, Land and Trees. (WALTA) Act. Overnight, houses in Amar Society were marked with a red ‘F’, denoting the full tank level (FTL) of the lake and sending a wave of panic among affluent residents, who said they were unaware they were violating the law.
Apart from people from Amar Society, residents of Nectar Garden and Doctors Colony as well as some home owners in Kavuri Hills were directed to remove illegal structures within the FTL and buffer zones of the water body.
Discussions about the demolition gained momentum as the notices coincided with the demolition of a portion of N-Convention, owned by actor Akkineni Nagarjuna, by Hydra.
Those served notice included Telangana Chief Minister A. Revanth Reddy’s brother Tirupati Reddy, whose sprawling office and residence are marked with huge posters of the politician. For a brief moment, it seemed that the days of tony cafes and lakeside houses with pretty, walled gardens were numbered.
That moment passed. The High Court directed the Greater Hyderabad Municipal Corporation authorities to consider the 2022 recommendations of the five-member committee that the inaccessible Cheruvu was no longer an irrigation tank but a tourist spot, and to practically settle the FTL encroachment issues, eliminating another ray of hope for the recovery of the lake.
Save Our Urban Lakes activist Lubna Sarwath says the damage is now visible even to a casual visitor. “I visited the lake about a month ago and found that the water flow has increased, there is more foam than ever before. Rocks have been broken to build the pipeline,” she says. What is being erased, she says, is a landscape that was once identified in technical reports as a triangular rocky enclosure connecting the inaccessible Cheruvu, the downstream Malkam Cheruvu and the Khajaguda Pedda Cheruvu – a natural system that allowed water to move, settle and sustain life.
The unveiling of Durgam Cheruvu as an ecosystem is not accidental but incremental, it is an ongoing project shaped by the cumulative actions of all civic bodies in Hyderabad. During the 2025 monsoon, the irrigation department dug a channel to release more water. At the same time, the Hyderabad Metropolitan Water Supply and Sewerage Board is discharging large quantities of sewage downstream as it tries to reconnect a 1,200 mm-diameter pipeline built to divert sewage from upstream areas around Durgam Cheruvu.
Each intervention is introduced as a technical requirement. Overall, they have steadily accelerated the pace of transforming a historic lake into a tightly controlled water body, its fate decided less by natural flow and contours and more by the compulsions of pipelines, valves and expedient real estate.
