Hyderabad: Greater Hyderabad Municipal Corporation (GHMC) officials say that the fear of Chief Minister K. Chandrasekhar Rao's wrath has forced the Charminar Pedestrianisation Project (CPP) into cold storage. The Errum Manzil controversy is the culprit. Top officials are discouraging any issue pertaining to heritage structures, which has meant that the Heritage Conservation Committee, which is supposed to meet fortnightly, has not met in six months.
The decade-old CPP is a joint venture between the GHMC and the Hydera-bad Road Development Corporation Limited (HRDCL), which was created as a special purpose vehicle to fund infrastructure projects. Though the state government handed over to HRDCL the construction of the two-level Salarjung pedestrian bridge (estimated cost: Rs 208.50 crore) to shift hawkers from the iconic Charminar, the façade development (estimated cost: Rs 30 crore; later reduced to Rs 10 crore) and the construction of two parking complexes near the old pension office at Khilwat (Rs 10 crore) as well as the Shalibanda bus stop (Rs 10 crore), HRDCL faced a severe fund crunch. GHMC has to take care of the special lighting and beautification works (estimated cost: Rs 5 crore) around the Charminar..
Interestingly, neither the civic body nor the state government has allocated funds for the project which could boost the chances of the iconic structure getting world heritage status.
When the HRDCL and the GHMC contacted the government about taking up the project with the CM, they were told he was in no mood to discuss heritage site projects, because of the outcry over construction of a new Assembly at the 17-acre Errum Manzil site. “To take the project forward, an independent body with fund allocation from either the civic body or state government has to be constituted,” an official said. “No bureaucrat wanted to bring it to the CM.”
