BJP flays govt over apathy towards Urban TS

Hyderabad: Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) leader, member of National Manifesto Sub Committee and president Futuristic Cities Karuna Gopal questioned the TRS government for its alleged gross apathy towards the problems on hand and complete lack of planning for Urban Telangana especially Hyderabad.

Addressing media here on Tuesday, she said Hyderabad continues to face the annual monsoon ordeals of flooding roads, inundation of low-lying areas, uprooting of trees and electricity poles, snapping cable lines, falling hoardings and overflowing sewerage water drains.

She reminded how the TRS government promised to make Hyderabad a 'Global City' and 'Olympic ready' after coming to power in the State.

She said former Urban Development Minister K T Rama Rao had said the city need not join the Smart Cities Mission launched by Prime Minister Narendra Modi in 2015, and instead claimed that Hyderabad is already a smart city.

"Can they show a single global city, smart city, Olympic ready city that comes to grind halt with just a few millimetres of rains?" she asked. Talking about how floods have affected the city in the past, Karuna Gopal alleged that the State government has shown no interest in taking long-term solutions.

She pointed out that the government was not acting on the reports of the Kirloskar Committee, Jawaharlal Nehru Technological University, Hyderabad (JNTU-H), NIT, Warangal technical report, and even the City Development Strategy (CDS) report prepared with the help of the World Bank assistance.

Karuna Gopal said the State government claims implementing expert reports like Kirloskar Committee are expensive. But, at the same time, it wastes thousands of crores on the Strategic Road Development Programme (SRDP) project that violates principles of sustainable development and encourages private cars.

It is, at a time, when the city is choked with 50 lakh vehicles, comprising 41 lakh two-wheelers, 9 lakh four wheelers and 1,000 new vehicles adding up every day to the city roads, she said.