Post-Flood Scrutiny on MGBS, Metro Station Location

Constructed in 1994 by APSRTC on nearly 18 acres leased from the GHMC, MGBS was once hailed as a model of urban transport planning. Today, it stands accused by experts of violating the River Conservation Act. The latest flood chaos, which submerged key city corridors, has exposed the grave risk of placing massive infrastructure inside a river system.

“Locating large-scale infrastructure within a riverbed disregards basic hydrology and inevitably magnifies flood vulnerability. Such outcomes were always predictable,” observed Sukesh Gupta, a member of the Indian Institute for Sustainable Urbanism (IISU).

Environmentalists blame policy failures for the current crisis. “We may not be able to relocate MGBS now, but the government must commit never to build on riverbeds or islands again,” said environmentalist E. Chandrasekhar. He urged the government to develop an alternative bus station in the hangar and old depot area at Osman Shahi, adjacent to the current site on Imlibun Island. “The old bus stand was right there at the hangar,” he said, adding that successive government orders have shrunk buffer zones, aggravating flood risks. “Even the Metro pillars rising from the Musi are eating into its natural flow,” he warned.

As the Musi swelled beyond bridges and inundated neighbourhoods, experts said Hyderabad’s decades of flawed planning are now exacting their price. Vanishing lakes, encroached drains and the choking of the Musi have multiplied the damage. “Treat Musi as a river, not real estate. Every flood will remind us of the price of treating a river as real estate. Until the buffers are restored and the Musi is treated like a river again, Hyderabad will remain defenceless,” an environmentalist cautioned.