Hyderabad: The long-pending issue of acquisition of 160 acres of land in Secunderabad that has been caught between the state and central government negotiations saw some light on Tuesday when Union Defence Minister Nirmala Sitharaman tweeted about it.
On Monday, Telangana IT and Municipal Administration and Urban Development Minister K.T. Rama Rao took to Twitter by referring to a new article where 210 acres of land was swapped for the Bengaluru Infra Project. He tweeted “Hon’ble @nsitharaman ji, I hope the same courtesy, principle can be extended to Telangana. We have been consistently requesting GoI for over 2 years for 160 acres of land for two important skyways in Hyderabad city. Await your positive response madam.”
In response to the minister’s tweet, the defence minister replied, “Of course KTR, No hesitations. Wish our officials work the details together for finalization. This is how we went about earlier with CMO Maharastra, Arunachal Pradesh and CMO Karnataka.”
This response came as relief for the long-pending issue. “Many thanks Madam, I look forward to an expeditious resolution in the interest of the people of Hyderabad,” K. T Rama Rao tweeted in return. The issue is about the state government being unable to acquire the land as it awaited permission from the Defence ministry.
In March this year, KTR in the assembly had said that the state had already allocated a large amount to widen roads and construct flyovers, but there was a hurdle as more than 100 acres of land was needed. “We offered the defence ministry 600 acres on the city's outskirts in lieu of 100 acres within the city. But they are making an unrealistic demand of Rs 30 crore towards the loss of property tax to the Secunderabad Cantonment Board (SCB), which the state government has rejected. As a result, the road and flyover work from Paradise to Kompally and JBS to Shamirpet could not be started,” KTR told the Assembly.
