Telangana: More stretches lose National Highway

Hyderabad: After the GHMC area, the state government has decided to denotify some stretches of state and National Highways on the city’s outskirts. This will take nearly 500 bars and liquor shops out of the purview of the Supreme Court’s order which bars such outlets with 500 metres of national and state highways.

The government has identified six stretches of state and National Highways for denotification, sources said. These include three state highway stretches — Sagar Road up to Gurra-mguda; Narsapur road up to Bahadurpally and Rajiv Rahadari up to Hakimpet — and three National Highway segments: Warangal road up to Narapally; Vijayawada road up to Hayatnagar; and Nag-pur road up to Kompally.

After they are denotified, the maintenance of the roads will be handed over to local bodies.

The government can denotify state highways by itself but National Highways have to be denotified by the Centre. Principal secretary, roads and building, Sunil Sharma said the government had sent the proposal to the Centre to denotify the three stretches of National Highways.

Surprisingly, liquor shop and bar managements received SMS messages asking how many outlets would be saved if the government denotifies the six stretches. A liquor shop owner said they  received this unofficial message from the Excise department.  The government is said to be ready to denotify other stretches of state and National Highways if necessary to save liquor outlets, and the excise department is studying the matter.