Hyderabad, May 17 -- Videos of activists hugging trees near Kasu Brahmananda Reddy National Park to stop them from being cut down surfaced widely on social media on Sunday, as protests intensified over the felling of nearly 2,000 trees for flyovers and underpasses around the park.

The visuals of protesters embracing trees amid large-scale felling around KBR Park reminded of the historic Chipko Movement of the 1970s, the grassroots environmental movement in which villagers in the Himalayan region hugged trees to prevent commercial logging.

The protesters gathered amid mounting anger over the large-scale removal of trees around KBR Park for the construction of flyovers and underpasses under Hyderabad's ongoing infrastructure expansion wor...