The drowning of six students at Pedda Kanjara in Sangareddy has exposed a dangerous gap in Hyderabad’s Ganesh immersion planning: authorities have identified designated sites, but have not clearly communicated which of the many remaining lakes and ponds are prohibited. The result is a grey zone in which traditionally used water bodies remain accessible to devotees without the safety infrastructure required for large public gatherings.
The incident is not only about the absence of cranes, barricades or trained swimmers at one lake. It raises a larger question about how a city manages a seasonal public activity across a fragmented network of water bodies, municipal jurisdictions and enforcement agencies. When a water body is neither approved nor explicitly barred, responsibility becomes difficult to assign and the public receives no clear operational instruction.
According to the report, Telangana has 64,055 water bodies, based on the Union Jal Shakti Ministry’s first Census of Water Bodies. The Hyderabad Metropolitan Development Authority’s latest available figure, from 2024, puts the number of lakes in its region at about 3,400. Against this network, 103 water bodies across the Greater Hyderabad Municipal Corporation, Cyberabad Municipal Corporation and Malkajgiri Municipal Corporation have been identified for idol immersion this year.
The numbers show the scale of the administrative challenge. A list of 103 approved locations may be useful for directing activity, but it does not by itself answer the question citizens face on the ground: where is immersion not allowed? The lake at Pedda Kanjara, where the six students drowned, was reportedly neither designated for immersion nor barred from it. That distinction has practical consequences because devotees may interpret the absence of a prohibition as permission, particularly at locations used by local communities over many years.
Medchal traffic DCP S Sheshadrini Reddy told the Times of India that the police had not been given a list of water bodies prohibited for immersion by municipal authorities. He said enforcement would be tightened once the list was received. The statement points to an institutional problem rather than a single enforcement lapse. Police can prevent access, manage traffic and respond to crowds, but they require timely and usable information from municipal agencies about the locations and activities they are expected to regulate.
GHMC superintendent engineer Suresh Babu said there was no general list of prohibited water bodies outside the designated immersion points. He said the sites had been selected on considerations including water availability and traffic, with the aim of channeling idol immersions to those locations. The remaining water bodies, he said, were not officially designated for immersion. He also said reservoirs such as Gandipet and Himayat Sagar were meant exclusively for drinking water.
This approach places considerable weight on the public understanding that “not designated” means “not permitted”. In practice, the two messages are not equivalent. A designated site is a positive instruction. A prohibited list is an enforcement tool. Without the second, agencies may struggle to establish whether access should be stopped, while residents may not know whether traditional use continues to be tolerated.
The reported comments from environmentalists underline the communication gap. Madhulika Choudhary said authorities needed to clearly communicate which water bodies could and could not be used. She noted that some lakes, including Gandipet and Mushkin Cheruvu, had historically been used by local communities. If authorities want devotees to move away from such places, she said, the direction must be communicated early and accessible alternatives must be provided.
This is important because festival infrastructure is not limited to the day of the event. It includes advance notices, local-language and visual signage, route planning, crowd management, barriers, lighting, water-depth information and arrangements for people who may attempt to enter the water. The supplied report does not establish that all these measures are absent across the city. It does, however, show that their availability varies sharply between designated points and other water bodies that remain part of local practice.
Physical conditions can further complicate enforcement. Choudhary said several lakes were not adequately maintained or desilted, and that silt accumulation could alter the lake bed and make the actual depth difficult to assess. In the absence of barricades, swimmers and other safety arrangements, entering such a water body during immersion becomes particularly dangerous. The concern is not simply that a lake is deep; it is that the visible surface may not reveal the conditions below it.
Karikunta Lake offers a reported example of how local intervention can change behaviour. Environmentalist Kalpana Ramesh said the lake had earlier seen more than 100 idol immersions, including 40 to 50 larger idols. After community intervention, the number fell to almost zero. She attributed the change to measures including CCTV cameras, banners, signage and residents and morning walkers personally monitoring the lake and stopping immersions.
That example suggests that enforcement is more effective when it is visible, local and continuous. It also shows the limits of relying only on a central list. Residents who understand a lake’s use patterns can identify recurring activity, but community monitoring cannot replace municipal responsibility. It can support communication and early intervention, but public safety still requires formal authority, clear rules and dependable arrangements at approved alternatives.
The Hussain Sagar episode adds a separate layer to the problem. A day after Hyderabad police put up posters banning the immersion of Plaster of Paris Ganesh idols at Tank Bund, a video circulating on social media showed people climbing over fences to immerse idols in Hussain Sagar. The reported activity took place despite a Telangana High Court order banning immersion in the lake. Saifabad ACP R Sanjay Kumar said police counselled some devotees and stopped the activity, while traffic police said additional forces were being deployed. Small immersion ponds were arranged on Necklace Road.
Hussain Sagar demonstrates that even a clearly stated prohibition can be difficult to enforce when a location is familiar, accessible and historically associated with the activity. The difference between this case and Pedda Kanjara is that the former involved an identified ban and a court direction, while the latter involved a water body that was reportedly neither designated nor explicitly prohibited. Together, the incidents show two distinct administrative tasks: communicating where people should go and preventing access where they should not.
The policy landscape therefore involves several overlapping responsibilities. Municipal bodies identify and prepare immersion points. Police and traffic authorities manage access, crowds and movement. Environmental and water-management considerations determine whether particular lakes or reservoirs can be used. Courts may impose restrictions, as in the case of Hussain Sagar. The effectiveness of the system depends on these institutions sharing the same location-wise instructions before the festival activity begins.
The reported figures also reveal why a small number of designated sites cannot be treated as the entire safety strategy. Telangana’s 64,055 water bodies and HMDA’s approximately 3,400 lakes indicate a dispersed physical landscape. The 103 approved sites across three urban municipal jurisdictions represent a planned network, but they coexist with many local water bodies that residents know and use. The administrative challenge is therefore not only constructing immersion facilities. It is managing the relationship between official sites and all the other places where people may attempt immersion.
The evidence supplied does not establish how many people use undesignated sites, how many water bodies have warning boards or how many locations have been inspected before the festival. It also does not provide a consolidated account of the number of cranes, barricades, trained swimmers or emergency teams at each designated point. Those gaps matter because the existence of a designated list cannot, by itself, demonstrate that the alternative sites are safe, accessible or adequate for the communities being asked to use them.
For residents, the practical issue is clarity. A family should not have to infer the status of a lake from the absence of a sign, a police presence or a municipal barrier. Nor should police officers have to wait for a list after immersion activity has begun. The reported statement from the Medchal traffic police indicates that enforcement depended on information still awaited from municipal authorities. That is a procedural weakness with direct consequences for public safety.
Hyderabad’s immersion arrangements are thus a test of urban governance at the point where seasonal culture meets permanent infrastructure. The city’s lakes are not interchangeable public spaces. Some are drinking-water reservoirs, some are urban environmental assets, some have altered physical conditions, and some have become customary community locations. A workable system must distinguish among them clearly and communicate those distinctions well before crowds arrive.
The reported drowning at Pedda Kanjara confirms the human cost of leaving that distinction unclear. The immediate response includes tighter enforcement, additional forces, posters and small immersion ponds. The larger unresolved issue is whether every water body likely to attract devotees has been classified, communicated and monitored through a coordinated municipal and police system. Until that happens, designated immersion sites will remain only one part of the safety problem.
