A coalition of over 500 citizens, activists, researchers, and affected residents from across India has written to Telangana Chief Minister A. Revanth Reddy, demanding a comprehensive review of the Musi Riverfront Development Project, the immediate withdrawal of land acquisition notifications, and the suspension of a planned groundbreaking ceremony scheduled for later this month. The open letter, dated March 24, 2026, and issued under the banner of the Musi Jan Andolan (MJA) — an independent people’s movement to safeguard River Musi and the communities living on its banks — represents one of the most coordinated challenges yet to the flagship urban renewal initiative of the Congress-led Telangana government.
The letter, addressed to Chief Minister Revanth Reddy and copied to senior Congress leadership including Rahul Gandhi, party president Mallikarjun Kharge, and AICC Telangana in-charge Meenakshi Natarajan, comes days after the government announced the formation of a Cabinet Sub-Committee on Musi Rejuvenation in the state assembly. While the signatories acknowledged that announcement and the Chief Minister’s assurance that all families affected by the project would be “taken care of,” they warned that the sub-committee must not be limited to overseeing implementation of what they described as a “flawed Riverfront Project” and must instead engage seriously with scientifically grounded and democratic alternative proposals.
At the centre of the group’s concerns is a series of government orders that, they argue, have set in motion a process of mass displacement with little public oversight or democratic accountability. A government order issued on December 16, 2025 — G.O.Rt.No.921 MA&UD (Plg-I) — identified 10,017 structures and 3,279 acres of land for “all phases of the project” and exempted the entire undertaking from the mandatory social impact assessment required under the Right to Fair Compensation and Transparency in Land Acquisition, Rehabilitation and Resettlement Act, 2013. The exemption was invoked by invoking Section 10A of the RFCTLARR Act, a provision introduced through a state amendment by the previous BRS government in 2017. The MJA called the current Congress administration’s reliance on that amendment “utterably unbecoming,” particularly given that the original 2013 legislation was enacted by the UPA-II government led by the Congress party.
The letter also flags a sharp discrepancy in displacement figures that the movement says has never been adequately explained. While the Chief Minister, in a public address on the project, stated that “hardly 10,000 families” reside along the Musi riverbanks — a figure arrived at, the government said, after four months of household-level surveys by hundreds of officers — an application submitted by the Musi River Development Corporation Limited (MRDCL) to the State Environment Impact Assessment Authority (SEIAA) refers to 12,204 families likely to be displaced in Phase 1A and Phase 1B alone. The movement has demanded a clear accounting of how displacement is being measured and whether viable non-displacing alternatives have been considered at all.
On costs too, the letter points to inconsistencies. The MRDCL’s presentation to the government cited a tentative development cost for Phase-I of between ₹6,500 crore and ₹7,000 crore, excluding land acquisition and transfer of development rights. This figure is significantly higher than the ₹5,641 crore submitted earlier by MRDCL to the SEIAA, and the signatories have sought clarification on the revised estimates. Separately, they flagged that the project has been consistently described in media and by some government officials as being partially funded by a ₹4,100 crore loan from the Asian Development Bank — a claim directly contradicted by official communications from the ADB dated January 23 and March 11, 2026, which confirmed that no loan approval had been granted as of those dates.
The ecological dimensions of the project have drawn equally sharp criticism. The MJA contends that the government’s approach inverts the sequence followed by successful international riverfront revitalisations. In cities such as London, Singapore, Seoul, and Paris, decades were spent eliminating industrial and municipal pollution before any amenity development was undertaken. Constructing parks, walkways, barrages for boating, and tourism infrastructure while the river remains polluted, the letter argues, will yield only superficial results. The signatories question the government’s stated emphasis on Sewage Treatment Plants, noting that while STPs address municipal sewage, toxic industrial discharges require Effluent Treatment Plants, and no clear strategy for regulating industrial effluents into the Musi has been placed before the public. The letter also expresses concern that plans to pump water from distant rivers and build concrete embankments could have consequences for flood management and groundwater recharge.
The movement also raised questions about the government’s handling of the 2025 floods, which devastated communities along the Musi. While official accounts attributed the flooding primarily to heavy rainfall, the MJA charged that water was released from two reservoirs without early warning to downstream communities, despite weather forecasts predicting heavy rain two days in advance. The letter called this a fundamental failure of dam safety management under the Dam Safety Act, 2021, and demanded an examination of early-warning systems.
The letter also takes strong exception to a passage in the Chief Minister’s address suggesting that the Musi project would help supply water to data centres being set up in Hyderabad. The movement described data centres as “extractive, exploitative, and anti-people” and demanded clarification on how the project balances domestic and ecological water needs against industrial requirements, particularly given the city’s acknowledged groundwater crisis.
The backdrop to the letter includes a sequence of meetings and confrontations between the MJA and the Telangana government over the past several weeks. On March 12, 2026, a twelve-member MJA delegation that included veteran activist Medha Patkar met Deputy Chief Minister Bhatti Vikramarka Mallu at Praja Bhavan for two and a half hours, presenting the movement’s demands and concerns a day before the Chief Minister was to unveil “detailed project plans” for Phase-I at an event at Hotel Taj Krishna. Deputy Chief Minister Vikramarka and minister Sridhar Babu heard the delegation’s concerns and assured them that the government was fully committed to democratic processes and would not undertake forcible or non-consensual displacement. The MJA chose not to attend the Taj Krishna event, which it said suffered from a “severe democratic deficit,” but monitored it digitally.
The MJA is now urging the Chief Minister and the newly constituted Cabinet Sub-Committee to undertake a comprehensive social, ecological, and financial cost-benefit analysis of the project and to explore alternatives that do not involve mass displacement. Their specific demands include the public release of a full Detailed Project Report for all phases — not just Phase-I — in English, Telugu, and Urdu, with a minimum sixty-day public consultation period; the withdrawal of G.O.Rt.No.921 and a related order dated November 15, 2025; the withdrawal of all land acquisition notifications; the constitution of an independent review committee with a river-basin approach; and the repeal of the 2017 state amendment to the RFCTLARR Act to restore the 2013 law in its original form.
The letter notes that critical voices on the project are not confined to civil society. The AICC Telangana in-charge Meenakshi Natarajan has herself written publicly on the issue and directly to the Chief Minister and Deputy Chief Minister, calling for dialogue with the MJA, restoration of the 2013 LARR Act, and a comprehensive overhaul of the project’s riverfront development approach.
The Musi Riverfront Development Project — promoted by the government as a transformative urban renewal initiative inspired by international models and branded partly around Mahatma Gandhi’s legacy through the proposed Gandhi Sarovar component — has become a flashpoint over displacement, ecological risk, financial opacity, and constitutional propriety. With a groundbreaking ceremony for Gandhi Sarovar reportedly being planned for March 28, and possibly for April 2 in the presence of Union Defence Minister Rajnath Singh, the letter represents an urgent attempt to press the government to pause before laying the first stone.
Among the signatories of the letter are prominent names from civil society, academia, and social activism across India, including Medha Patkar, environmental engineer Sagar Dhara, social activist Shabnam Hashmi, former Osmania University professor Rama Melkote, human rights activist Fr. Cedric Prakash, retired medical scientist Dr. Veena Shatrugna, IIM Ahmedabad faculty member Navdeep Mathur, and Gautam Bandyopadhyay of Nadi Ghati Morcha, as well as hundreds of residents from Hyderabad localities including Bandlaguda, Hydershakote, Suncity, and Gandhamguda who stand to be directly affected by the project.
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