Older order changeth yielding to new: Old Secretariat slips into history

Hyderabad: The Telangana government on Tuesday started demolition of the state secretariat buildings in Hyderabad to pave way for the construction of an ultra-modern and Vastu-compliant secretariat complex at a cost of Rs 700 crore to Rs 900 crore.

The secretariat complex facing the picturesque Hussain Sagar lake on the eastern side has been serving as the highest seat of administration since the 1950s.

As the demolition exercise began past midnight on Monday, the Hyderabad police cordoned off all the routes leading to the secretariat and imposed traffic restrictions for about a kilometre radius from the work site by erecting barricades.

The employees were asked not to come to the temporary secretariat in the BRKR Bhavan and work from home. The works began with Chief Secretary Somesh Kumar breaking the coconut.

On Tuesday morning as the works were underway, the CMO issued an image of the proposed new building with a note "Likely to be approved." But sources said that Chief Minister K Chandrasekhar Rao had already approved the design.

Construction of the new building is likely to begin during the last week of July. Sources said that the new complex would be ready latest by December. The proposed secretariat complex will have six-lakh square feet built-up area.

The demolition work started from the C Block, also known as Samatha, that housed the Chief Minister's Office till recently. As 50 percent of the demolition work was over, simultaneously demolition of the D Block also was taken up.

Initially, the government had planned to use implosion technique to flatten all the buildings, but gave up the idea after the seismologists warned of seismic affect. The demolition work will be completed in next three days.

Telangana Congress president N Uttam Kumar Reddy described the demolition exercise as a black day in the history of Telangana. He said the Telangana government was spending crores of rupees of public money to satisfy the Vastu belief of the Chief Minister.

"KCR was hell bent on demolishing the secretariat only because of his penchant for Vastu. He thought Vastu of the existing complex was not suitable for him and that was why he had never entered the secretariat after taking over as the Chief Minister," the PCC chief said.

State BJP official spokesman K Krishna Sagar Rao strongly protested the action of the TRS government and accused it of demolishing the secretariat buildings for the false prestige of KCR even as the country and state are in the midst of the coronavirus pandemic.

It was on June 29 that the Telangana High Court gave the green signal for the construction of the new secretariat complex in the place of existing one, stating that the judiciary would not interfere in the policy decisions of the government.

Krishank, TRS official spokesperson ,said, "Unfortunately, the BJP is trying to politicise the entire issue, forgetting the fact that Government of India is continuing with its whopping Rs 20,000-crore project, in which a new Parliament building is being constructed.