Hyderabad: Telangana Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) state president N Ramchander Rao on Friday, November 28, today strongly opposed the state Congress government’s decision to expand the jurisdiction of the Greater Hyderabad Municipal Corporation (GHMC) by merging 27 local bodies located within the Outer Ring Road (ORR).
The Telangana cabinet earlier this week approved the decision to merge 20 municipalities and 7 municipal corporation areas into the GHMC area. Rao at a press conference said the BJP opposes the decision to the merger to “create a metropolitan city” as decentralization is necessary for effective implementation of administration. He added the decision of the merger by the Congress government would “harm public interest”.
The Telangana BJP chief also held a meeting with party corporators and key leaders and discussed details of the issue. “He pointed out that the merger would bring over 2 crore people under GHMC’s jurisdiction and argued that the cash-trapped GHMC currently lacks the necessary facilities to manage such a large population and the move would only lead to increased taxes on the people in the newly merged areas,” said a press release from the party.
Rao also questioned the merger’s “logic” noting that the existing municipalities were already struggling with severe issues like lack of sanitation, poor roads, drainage problems, ineffective waste management and negligence in streetlights and water works. “Merging them into a cash-strapped GHMC would not solve these problems but would instead make administration completely difficult to meet needs of citizens,” he added.
Accusing the state government of following the previous Bharat Rashtra Samithi (BRS) government’s “Tughlaq like policies”, Rao alleged that the merger decision was “solely motivated by the interests of the real estate mafia” here. He further alleged that chief minister Revanth Reddy’s administration appears to be focused more on real estate activities than governance, referencing the controversial HILT (Hyderabad Industrial Lands Transformation) policy aimed at transferring over 9,000 acres of land.
He demanded the Congress government to immediately withdraw the decision to expand the GHMC area.
The Telangana cabinet on Tuesday, November 25, approved merging 27 urban local bodies within the Hyderabad–Telangana core urban area into the Greater Hyderabad Municipal Corporation (GHMC). Necessary amendments to the GHMC Act and the Telangana Municipal Act have also been approved by the cabinet.
