Hassled Osman Nagar dwellers flag concern over fresh rains

Jalpally: With the city and surrounding districts consistently witnessing rain, people especially of the Osman Nagar area, near the Burhankhan Lake, in Jalpally municipality, see no light at the end of the tunnel as hundreds of houses remained inundated. Officials are too in a quandary as they themselves find the issue a perplexing riddle to resolve.

While the houses were moderately submerged since October 2020, when the area first received floods, fresh rain for almost a week has raised a concern about the survival of the submerged houses. Residents fear that the structures may not last long if rain continues.

Syed Yusuf Patel, the spokesperson of Vice Chairperson Jalpally Municipality, said "the basement of the houses was submerged. The walls too were soaked for over a year making the structures completely fragile and vulnerable to any mishap. Though some families are still living in the semi-submerged houses, a number of families have already shifted to nearby places in rented accommodations."

As per statistics provided by the Irrigation officials, the lake is spread over 78.231 acres, equivalent to 3107.150 metres, encompassing several areas covering two municipalities of Jalpally and Badangpet. While one side of the lake comes under Jalpally, a part of other side is in Badangpet. Officials say around 350 houses remain inundated under knee-deep water in the area. Persistent rain is only aggravating the situation, as the water level is surging every day. The deluge, caused by last years' flood also left the officials between the devil and the deep sea, as parties affected on both sides of the lake approached a court for relief. The flood-affected area where houses were inundated covers two densely populated wards, 3 and 7, of the Jalpally Municipality, coincidently represented by both alliance partners, such as TRS and AIMIM. While Ward 3 is represented by the MIM, 7 is led by the TRS.

Meanwhile, to assess the situation given the consistent rain in the area, teams of senior officials from both municipalities visited Venkatapur Lake bund twice in the last 24 hours and took stock of the area. Also, the Regional Director Municipal Administration and Urban Development (MOUD) Srinivas Reddy on Tuesday visited the lake along with Commissioners G P Kumar (Jalpally) Krishna Mohan Reddy (Badangpet), MRO Balapur Srinivas Reddy, DE Vishveshwar Rao, DE (irrigation) Jagdish and discussed the issue. Balapur CI Bhaskar was present.