Roads to get facelift in Anantapur

Anantapur: The city is getting a facelift with the Central, state governments and Anantapur Municipal Corporation taking up multiple road projects covering the entire gamut of extended areas in the city. The famous Clock Tower road, Raju road and the housing board colonies are getting a new look. The construction of road dividers and planting of greenery between the dividers has changed the face of the city, thanks to the initiatives of Municipal Corporation. Civic observers say that the town had graduated from precarious civic conditions, a decade ago, to a beautiful city with well-developed roads and excellent greenery today. Many cosmopolitan clubs and new high-profile eatery clubs and restaurants and the presence of hundreds of IT graduates everywhere is giving the city a cosmopolitan touch.

The city's main fare, the Clock Tower road is the main attraction. Greenery on the road dividers has given added beauty apart from making all the public walls picturesque with thought provoking pictures on water conservation, hygiene and girl child issues and other social subjects dotting the city walls. Municipal Commissioner P V V S Murthy told The Hans India that picturesque paintings on the public walls have prevented the public from pasting posters and hand bills on the walls. The Ramnagar-PTC road which used to be bumpy has been repaired and widened. Cement sofas beside the avenue plantations has given the general public an opportunity to relax on the sofas under the shade of trees. The new Road over Bridge at Ramnagar is a feather in the city's cap. The commissioner, a man of creative ideas, is all set to execute laying of new roads through the Smart Cities Development Corporation (SCDC), which is a Special Purpose Vehicle floated by the state government for the express purpose of developing Smart Cities. The Commissioner is taking keen interest in executing the new roads and making all transactions transparent and foolproof through E-Local Governance. With this corruption and underhand dealings can be curbed, he adds. Under the SCDC scheme of things, new roads have been undertaken including the Vidyuthnagar-JNTU road, Judge Bunglow-Court Road, LKP- Srikantam circle road, Clock Tower - Railway station road etc are all taken up at a cost of Rs 10.86 crore. As many as 6 welcome arches with LED screen displays are welcoming people to the city from six directions. Rs 3 crore had been spent on the welcome arches. Also, conventional streetlights have been replaced with LED lights. This step has brought down cost of power consumption by 50 percent. Replying to a question, Murthy said that the quality of governance and tracking of files has drastically improved because of e-governance and making all transactions and programme implementation purely online.