Dues unpaid for development works taken up by HRDCL; ongoing projects to be affected
Road development works initiated before the elections last year have all slowed down as funds due from the GHMC and Hyderabad Metropolitan Development Authority have not arrived
Several works taken up by the Hyderabad Road Development Corporation (HRDCL) across the city are hanging in the balance due to uncertainty of funding.
The road development works initiated before the elections to the legislative assembly last year have all slowed down as funds due from the Greater Hyderabad Municipal Corporation (GHMC) and Hyderabad Metropolitan Development Authority (HMDA) have not arrived.
HRDCL was created by the then Telangana state government as a specialpurpose vehicle in 2017, ostensibly for the development of city roads. While the road work taken up by HRDCL does not need any approval from the GHMC council, the funds for the projects are tied up with the civic body.
Over the years, a total of 240 km of roads in the city, including the Inner Ring Road, have been transferred to the HRDCL.
So far, HRDCL has completed 30 link and slip roads of a combined length of 35.33 km, with an expenditure of ₹454 crore within GHMC and peripheral urban local bodies. Eight to nine more roads are in various stages of progress while some are at the fag end of the completion stage.
Construction of two highlevel bridges proposed on the Musi/Esa rivers by the previous government too was handed over to the corporation, for which tenders were floated before elections and work orders were given. For one of the two bridges at Fathullaguda, 40 per cent of the work is completed, officials informed under the condition of anonymity.
The second bridge on the Esa River at Suncity was 18% complete when the newly elected Congress government decided to hold the works in view of the project for comprehensive development of the Musi riverfront.
As per the officials, over ₹8 crore dues are pending from the Greater Hyderabad Municipal Corporation and ₹5 crore from HMDA for the link roads and RoBs taken up as part of the Strategic Road Development Plan (SRDP) — the BRS government’s pet project aiming for signal free traffic flow in the city. “The dues are for works completed so far and when we sought the same, GHMC officials said that close to ₹200₹300 crore are due for their own SRDP contractors,” an official said.