GHMC park in shambles

Hyderabad: Amid highrise apartments and offices at Jubilee Garden in Kondapur, the only lung space was to be a GHMC park, but this is being encroached upon.

Despite residents bringing it to the notice of minister K.T. Rama Rao during a Mana Nagaram programme, a private construction company continues to claim ownership of the land. Residents want to develop a park as per the layout given to them.

The company took permission from HUDA to form a layout by purchasing land from farmers two decades ago. It did not implement the initial layout with 28 plots and the site was identified as a cancelled layout.

However, a new layout was put in place with 148 plots and was sold to people. In the documents provided to the owners of these plots, there is a mention of parks and common passage in 7.38 acres. While there are roads, there is not one park in the vicinity.

The construction company alleged that the cancelled layout formed the new layout and apparently gave a random survey number and secured clearance under the land regularisation scheme recently for the park area.

This survey number reportedly belongs to the TCS building. Residents who identified the issue raised their concerns with the GHMC, which had demarcated the land a oark. Since the last two years, residents have been urging authorities to take action and develop the park as there is a dearth of lung space.

According to sources, the company could not produce documents so far and alleged that the papers with the actual owners were forged.

Amid this dispute, Serilingampally MLA Arekapudi Gandhi laid a foundation stone for construction of a compound wall for the park at an estimated cost of Rs 42 lakh on August 11 which was sanctioned by the GHMC. However, despite the efforts to protect lung spaces, the ownership of the land and development of the park lies in a limbo.

The civic body reportedly will be taking action on Monday to stall the encroachment and clear the debris that has been dumped.