Banyan No.734 on NH-163 set on fire by miscreants.
| Photo Credit: SWATHI VADLAMUDI
A broad strip of sunlit ochre along the narrow BT road appears distinctly at variance from the naturally occurring soil at Chevella between Aloor and Damaragidda villages. The laterite rich soil makes a solid bed for the widened portion of National Highway 163, the work for which is currently on full throttle.
On the other side of the road, stands a large banyan, its trunk burning beneath the fresh ash pile at the base. Glowing embers are noticeable only upon a much closer inspection. It’s one among the banyans of Chevella which were saved from being axed/translocated after a prolonged legal battle in the National Green Tribunal.
As a compromise worked out between the National Highways Authority of India and the petitioners representing the citizens’ campaign ‘Save Banyans of Chevella’, the NHAI agreed to retain 765 banyan trees where they were, and translocate 150 to the shoulder of the road to facilitate the widening of the tortuous highway.
The tree which is freshly on fire is numbered 734 in the Google Maps link, where all banyan trees on the 48.5 kilometre route were marked by the Nature Lovers of Hyderabad, which spearheaded the campaign. The colour assigned to the tree on the map is green, which means that it is one of the trees to be retained in situ.
NHAI enumerated a total 1036 banyans on the route at the time of the project inception in 2017. Of these, more than a 100 trees were hacked down by unknown miscreants, bringing their number to less than 900 by 2019. During 2020, under the cover of COVID-19 lock down, more trees were burnt, mutilated or axed on the stretch, probably by the irate property owners who were vexed with the delays in the road widening project.
A survey by the Nature Lovers Group then put the total number of trees burnt, damaged and uprooted at 101. A more recent survey in November, 2025 by Vata Foundation, an NGO, counted 867 trees on the stretch between Moinabad and Manneguda, and 184 of them were burnt at the base. Of the 765 trees proposed for retention, only 729 remain on the ground, and of these, 161 trees were burnt at the base.
Banyan No.734 collapsed on Tuesday, after three or more agonising days of fire searing through its trunk. Together with two gigantic banyans lying on the edge of the laterite soil, it will soon be a number in the list of felled/dead trees.
“At least 10 trees disappeared at the same location, going by the Google map demarcation. This is a work of sabotage, and not one isolated instance. I will not be surprised if more and more retained trees are burnt in the same fashion, which renders the whole campaign purposeless,” says P. Uday Krishna the founder of Vata Foundation, who was the first voice against axing the banyans when the highway proposal came up.
Published – January 21, 2026 08:20 am IST
