Hyderabad: City yet to recover

Hyderabad: There appears to be no end to the misery of the people in the city. While many parts of the city is under sheet of water with nalas overflowing and lakes breached, the alert from the weather office of more rains on Monday and Tuesday has sent chill down the spine of the people.

A visit to areas like Hafiz Babanagar, which happens to be one of the densely populated area on Inner Ring Road under Chandrayangutta, one could see water up to 10-feet gushing into lanes and bylanes, following breach created in the Gurram Cheruvu by authorities on Saturday evening.

The announcement by the local corporator had helped people to move to safer places in time before water-level rose past midnight. The residents of Babanagar blamed the authorities for loss of property overnight. Videos of piles of damaged vehicles including four-wheelers went viral.

"We never expected that they (authorities) would resort to this kind of measure to protect other areas which were already submerged in waters. The officials apparently wanted to protect the properties bigwigs and hence they breached the bund instead of opening the existing gates," Abdullah Bahmaid, a resident of Barkas, explained to The Hans India.

Meanwhile, the officials who reached to fill the breach informed that one of the gates was opened, but the one which is 30 feet below could not be opened. "The breach is being closed to control the situation. We have already completed the works at Palle Cheruvu," said M A Hameed Khan, Superintending Engineer.

Besides breach of lakes, there were overflowing nalas in some other parts of the city impacting localities like Chaderghat and Talabkatta. According to locals, the big nalas which connect to Musi from areas as far as Jalpally were not maintained properly.

"The authorities in some areas removed the retaining wall as part of Haritha Haram. So it was obvious that people would suffer. Earlier we had questioned the Home Minister on his visit to the area about the measures being taken by the government," said Syed Bilal of Human Rights Forum.

Bilal questioned the seriousness of the government, as DRF teams barely could help the people in rescue operations. "In most of the locations people used every means, as DRF teams failed to respond in time. Nor the helicopters which were kept in standby were used during the floods," he pointed out.

With the lifting of gates of Himayatsagar, Musi water has been overflowing from Puranapul to Moosarambagh. Similarly at Nagole, Musi was overflowing.