East may be the sought-after location in terms of real estate and properties, but the eastern side of Greater Hyderabad Municipal Corporation (GHMC), represented by the L.B. Nagar zone, continues to get a raw deal in terms of development and maintenance of greenery by the civic body.
Expenditure by the Urban Biodiversity wing of GHMC over the years, presented to the Council during the recent budget session, clearly shows the bias against the zone, which had been added to the civic body after migration from Municipal Corporation of Hyderabad.
During the financial year 2020-21, the UBD wing spent close to ₹18 crore under various heads, including development, maintenance and procurement of plants. Of this, only 1.06 crore was the expenditure recorded in the L.B. Nagar zone, which amounts to about 6% of the funds used.
With about ₹52 lakh under Development, and around ₹21 lakh for Maintenance and ₹33 lakh for Procurement, it is also the lowest amount spent by the wing across the six zones, lower than the expenditure in Charminar zone, which received close to ₹3.37 crore during the period..
Fund utilisation was the highest in Kukatpally zone, at about ₹4.14 crore, followed by Serilingampally at ₹4.06 crore. Much higher funds are spent in development of fresh areas of greenery in these two zones, while the same cannot be said about L.B. Nagar.
During the previous financial year too, as per the figures available up to February, a total of ₹24 crore was spent under the three heads, of which the expenditure by Kukatpally zone is far ahead of others at close to ₹6 crore. This is a quarter of the total expenditure, followed by ₹4.86 crore spent by Secunderabad. While maintenance figures are not available for the L.B. Nagar zone, the expenditure on Development and Procurement stood at around ₹26 lakh.
UBD officials, when contacted, attributed it to data not being furnished by the zonal-level officials, rather than under-allocation of funds. Moreover, the zone has a profusion of colony parks, maintenance of which is shared by the colony welfare associations, they informed.
This is not one-off instance though. Over the years, expenditure has been minimal for the zone, for some undecipherable reason. Since 2015-16, about ₹9.14 crore has been spent on the L.B. Nagar zone, from the total expenditure of ₹83.3 crore by the UBD wing, which amounts to about 11%.
Thankfully though, the zone is endowed with one national park and several urban forest parks, which provide enough lung spaces for the region.
