Hyderabad: City paid dearly for halting of widening

Hyderabad: Lack of desiltation and halting the nala widening project has maximised the submersion of low lying areas in the city. Though night-long rescue operations were taken up, the Greater Hyderabad Municipal Corporation managed to clear the water stagnation at very few locations on Wednesday.

The civic body in a span of two years has managed to clear four bottlenecks out of 46 identified in the city. This apart, the corporation was yet to clear 14 major stagnation points in the low lying areas along Musi River.  Officials blamed the local leaders for hindering the project and they clarified that they could not go ahead unless with strong political will.

Parts of the city got flooded every year whenever there was a little extra rainfall, because the cause of this flooding was the encroachments on nalas which decreased their ability to carry the extra water. The opposition too was not pressing for action of this kind. Authorities claimed that incessant rains on Tuesday and Wednesday should be an eye-opener for the higher authorities who had been keeping the nala widening project on the back burner for 15 years.

The Telangana government had sanctioned Rs  230 crore for widening of the storm water drains at 47 identified bottleneck points. The corporation in a knee jerk reaction had identified as many as 46 bottlenecks and 850 encroachments on them. The civic body had decided to remove the encroachments and widen the nalas to save the city from inundation.

However, the corporation had managed to widen nalas only on a 371 metres stretch. The civic body had widened 55 metres by tunnelling the pipe drain at Nawab Saheb Kunta, widened 200 metres nala at Kalaniketan to Musi river missing links, it had widened nala by 16 metres by constructing storm water drain from Qayam Nagar -Fortview colony to Musi river gap portion in Ashok Vihar Colony and 100 metre nala widening was also done from BSNL office to KPHB Cheruvu drain. Barring this, the corporation was yet to widen nalas of about 8,642 metres in Kapra, Nacharam, Rajendernagar, Falaknuma, Tolichowki, Khajaguda, Hafeezpet, Allwyn colony, Balanagar, Akber Nagar and RK Puram.  The project was put on hold since then which resulted in major areas in the city getting inundated.

A senior GHMC official, on condition of anonymity, said that the issue of nala widening did not see any progress since 15 years. He said since then, no successive governments came in support of the civic body. The official, citing land acquisition and encroachment removal as primary hindrance for the project, said nala widening could not be taken up without addressing both issues. He said that due to non co-operation of various wings in the GHMC, the corporation could even manage to complete the tender process for several works. The official also stressed that the corporation could not widen the city’s nalas even in the next 15 years without strong political will.  Incidentally, politicians blame corporation officials during inundation.

The GHMC official also stressed that the low-lying areas in the city would be inundated during the current monsoon and political leaders were the only ones to blame for the disaster in waiting. He said that despite reminding that encroachments be removed from nalas, various wings within the corporation were also not extending support of any sort.

However, the official said that 384 monsoon response teams, 13 disaster teams jumped into action, and cleared 82 water stagnation points and 12 uprooted trees. Disaster response force (DRF) teams saved two persons who were stranded in the heavy flow at Nagole.