Hyderabad: After several online petitions and requests against the Local Military Authority’s (LMA) decision to shut off roads to civilians, residents held a candlelight protest on Saturday evening. Hundreds of residents took out a candlelight march from Valerian Grammar School to the Yapral Water Tank against the road closure in Secunderabad Cantonment.
The residents alleged they were facing a lot of inconvenience because an 800-metre ride has turned into an 8-km detour for them. According to the protesters, the students of Valerian Grammar School could earlier walk down, but now have to change three buses. More than 10 roads in the golf course area were closed by the LMA, the residents alleged.
Mr C.S. Chandrashekhar from Green Sainikpuri, a resident who participated in the protest said, “These roads were in use by the civilians for the last 200 years as they were all public roads. Our children used these roads for going to school and college. Our elderly and ill people used it to reach Bolaram Hospital and Alwal Government Hospital. We are cut off from our places of worship like Ayyapa Swami temple at Lakdawala and Holy Trinity Church. We are all cut off from our cantonment telephone exchange.”
She added, “Earlier we could cross over to Rajiv Rahadari at 8 places, but today we can cross only at Triumulgherry and Lothukunta. We have to take a detour of more than 8 km just to reach Lakdawala Junction. From Yapral we only get buses to Secuderabad station but from Lakdawala Junction we can get buses to anywhere. Earlier this year, the school had said that its student strength had dropped drastically from 2,200 to less than 800.”
The residents said they came to know that that Ministry of Defence had issued a letter on January 1, 2015, to reopen the cantonment roads all over India which were closed without following the Cantonments Act 2006 procedure.
