Govt's plan to build longest flyover hits a dead end

HYDERABAD: The government’s ambitious plan to construct the country’s longest flyover from Sanjeeva Reddy Nagar to Khairatabad has been put in cold storage.
About two years ago, chief minister Chandrababu Naidu had at a meeting with Hyderabad Urban Development Authority (Huda) and Municipal Corporation of Hyderabad MCH) officials ordered the construction of the six-kmlong flyover to decongest one of the busiest roads in the city.
Losing no time, Huda, with help of a consultant from Mumbai, prepared a blueprint for construction of the flyover with upper and lower ramps at the junctions and presented it to the CM. The estimated cost of flyover was to be around Rs 150 crore.
Huda also agreed to raise funds for the project. However, MCH also pitched for taking up construction of the prestige project. But till this day, it has not submitted a blueprint for project, a government official said.
While a decision on Huda’s master plan is gathering dust, a final call on who will construct the flyover is still awaited, the official said.
“Huda took the initiative to work on the blueprint and presented it to the CM. Had the MCH been interested, it too should have taken up the project, conducted a survey on their own and presented it to the deciding authorities,� the official said.
MCH officials have another story to tell. They claimed Huda was yet to hand over any flyover to the civic body, even though the CM recently asked the urban development body to hand over maintenance and construction new flyovers MCH, they said.
However, Huda officials said if the MCH was ready maintain the flyovers, they didn’t have a problem. “We get some revenue out of the flyovers through advertisements and the money earned is used for maintenance of the greenery underneath them,� he added.
The apparent rift over who should build the new flyover has put the project in the back burner, the official said. With the two departments at loggerheads over the project, the city’s dream of having the country’s longest flyover is all but killed.