Telangana: Roads and Buildings dept seeks Rs 100 crore for Secretariat

Hyderabad: After a long wait, it appears that Chief Minister K. Chandrasekhar Rao’s plans to build an entirely new Secretariat complex will finally get underway.
According to sources, the Roads and Buildings department, in its Budget proposals sent to the finance department, has made a provision of Rs 100 crore for the construction of new Secretariat buildings.

This will mean that the state government will be allotting Rs 100 crore in Budget 2017-18. The move comes even as there are two cases pending before the High Court regarding demolition of the Secretariat buildings.

Significantly, the R&B department’s proposal of allocating Rs 100 crore for the new Secretariat buildings come at a time when Governor E.S.L. Narasimhan is continuing discussions with ministers of both AP and TS on handing over of Secretariat buildings allotted to AP government to the TS government.

AP was allotted J, K, L, H and North H blocks in the Secretariat complex. Later, the AP government shifted its Secretariat departments to the Interim Secretariat complex constructed at Velagapudi in AP capital region.

The TS government asked Mumbai-based architect Hafeez Contractor to prepare the designs for the proposed new Secretariat complex. Presently, there are several blocks in the Secretariat; Mr Rao wants a massive building with over 5 lakh square feet of working space in 10 floors. The new east-facing Secretariat building will have separate entrances for the Chief Minister, ministers and IAS officers.