Hyderabad: Jalpally municipality counts on LRS funds for development

Hyderabad: With a flagging flow of funds from the government, income from the Layout Regularisation Scheme (LRS) is coming in handy to bail out the Jalpally municipality. It has embarked on its fourth road proposal after executing three such projects, one after another, this year.

"Following the execution of three road projects this year, the Jalpally Municipal Council gave approval to the fourth proposal from Osmania Hotel to the Kothapet area at an estimated cost of Rs.2.5 crore. The 1.8-km road is awaiting technical sanction and is likely to be cleared soon," informed Municipal chairman Abdallah Sadi.

Explaining the roads works that were carried out using the LRS funds, he said, "three projects under the LRS Scheme have been executed this year, including one from Bismillah Colony to Shaheen Nagar costing Rs.40 lakh and another from Wadi-e-Omer to Shah Hills at Rs.32 lakh. Similarly, a road from SBI to Pragna School in Sri Ram Colony was laid recently with the fund support of Rs.50 lakh," Abdallah said," the road from Osmania Hotel to Kottapet is a major one in the entire municipality, but anticipating its narrow appearance at several points, the council has decided to re-carpet it with a minor road-widening to overcome bottlenecks.

After bringing the issue before Education Minister Sabita Indra Reddy and MP Asaduddin Owaisi, it was approved by the council. The road will be widened to six metres at narrow points while seven metres at open areas with sufficient space. This is a major project among all the road proposals executed using the LRS funds. A few other proposals are in the pipeline but are covered under other schemes that need government funds to get into shape." According to officials, the municipality received Rs.4 crore under the LRS scheme in 2020. However, as per rules, it is liable to utilise only 70 percent of the fund for execution of development works in its purview. The revenue was fetched from the 14,000 applications.

Considering that the flow of government funds is flagging in recent months, the civic officials are rolling out development proposals targeting only plain areas of the municipality.

Spread over an area of 30 square kilometers with a mixed population of around 80,374 (as per 2011 Census), the municipality was formed in 2016 by merging areas of Jallapally, Balapur, Kottapet, Pahadi Shareef. The densely populated civic body was divided into 28 wards providing housing to around 23,961 families.