Hazardous compounds in aquifers, especially potentially toxic heavy metals, are a major environmental and socioeconomic problem around the world. Hence, the study is intense to quantify, for the first time, the pollution status and ecological risk of heavy metals around inactive mining sites in the Southwestern (SW) region of Cuddapah Basin. Ten heavy metals, including arsenic (As), cobalt (Co), cadmium (Cd), iron (Fe), chromium (Cr), nickel (Ni), manganese (Mn), lead (Pb), zinc (Zn) and strontium (Sr) were investigated for a total of 50 groundwater samples of this study. The findings of the study revealed that arsenic (0-60.5 and o.56.3 µg/L), cadmium (0-28.1 and 0.31.1 µg/L), nickel (0-110.2 and 0–99 µg/L)), lead (0-175.6 and 0-92.3), Strontium (0-1150 and 0-1440 µg/L) concentrations are above the acceptable levels in both pre and post – monsoon seasons. The Heavy Metal Pollution Index (HPI), Heavy Metal Evolution Index (HEI) and Degree of contamination (DOC) are applied to assess hazardous metal pollution in drinking water of this area. According to HPI values 17.5 % and 10% of samples fall under high pollution index; as per the classes of HEI, 95 % and 100% of samples fall under low pollution class during the pre and post-monsoon season. According to DOC, all groundwater samples fall in a low zone. As per ecological risk classification, 90% of the samples cause extreme high ecological risk in pre & post-monsoon season in the study area.