GHMC's land acquisition wing hits road projects

Hyderabad: Greater Hyderabad Municipal Corporation’s land acquisition wing has been sitting on city infrastructure project works worth Rs 5,000 crore. Due to apathy of the corporation, the average speed of vehicular movement has come down to less than 5 km during peak hours. Heavy traffic jams which were constrained to IT corridors have now spread to all the arterial roads of the city due to diversions and barricading.

The delay has temporarily halted multiple infrastructure Skyway projects like Strategic Road Development Plan (SRDP), construction of Balanagar Flyover, Uppal-Ghatkesar elevated corridor and long pending skyway at Amberpet crossroads. The corporation is yet to acquire as many as 1,457 properties to take projects forward.

SRDP alone requires 587 properties and 1,58,360.40 square yards on land. A whopping Rs 1,500 crore. construction work has been temporarily put on hold. Apart from this, the civic body has decided to take up 200 road widening projects at the cost of Rs 3,867 crore. which also requires land and property acquisition. Officials have claimed that the since the land acquisition has been running at snail’s pace, the corporation cannot complete the projects in the stipulated time.

The corporation and Hyderabad Metropolitan Development Authorities have barricaded the narrow stretches and started work at multiple locations. All the infrastructure work has been halted mid way due to the apathy of land acquisition wing, due to which the per km speed of vehicles passing through IT corridors, LB Nagar, Uppal Junction and Balanagar has come down less than 5 km during the peak hours.

According to highly placed sources, even though the HMDA authorities and the projects department was ready with the compensation amount, the land acquisition wing has been delaying the process with vested interests. On the flip side, officials claimed that the property owners in prime areas of the city have been not accepting compensation according to the Land Acquisition Act, 2013.

The unit cost was fixed decades ago pertaining only to the erstwhile MCH areas which has now transformed in to GHMC after merging 12 peripheral municipalities. The current market price has enhanced multifold. Officials claimed that the property owners were not only rejecting the compensation by GHMC but also the new Transferable Development Rights (TDR).

A senior GHMC official on condition of anonymity said that there has been an urgent need to form an independent land acquisition wing for speeding up the land acquisition and negotiating with the property owners.

“In order to simplify the process, the corporation should depute a special officer who have resolved land acquisition issues with the collectors of Hyderabad, Medchal, Ranga Reddy and Sangareddy districts. Apart from this, the corporation officials were not acquiring properties due to a staff crunch. Out of 46 posts in the land acquisition department, 23 posts have been lying vacant,” the official said. 

He said that the corporation on May 31 wrote to the state government regarding issues pertaining to land acquisition and were awaiting for a reply.