Allocations to urban development with specific reference to the State capital are as yet nebulous in the ₹2.75 lakh crore Budget presented by Minister of Finance Bhatti Vikramarka at the Assembly on Saturday.
With the exception of Musi River development project, for which ₹1,000 crore was allocated, the budget for the Municipal Administration & Urban Development department was too general, and nothing to write home about compared to allocations last year.
Funds to the tune of ₹11,692 crore were allocated to MA&UD as against ₹11,372 crore in the 2023-24 budget, clocking only a marginal hike of about 3%.
Of the last year’s allocations, ₹7,500 crore were earmarked for expansion of Rajiv Gandhi International Airport, and ₹6,250 crore for Metro Rail. This year, however, there is no separate mention of allocations to the Metro Rail or any other specific project, despite elaborate plans previously enunciated by Chief Minister A. Revanth Reddy towards extension of the facility in Old City and beyond.
Musi development
Under the Musi river development, the budget mentioned an action plan not only to clean the river, but also to develop its catchment area as an employment generation region. Immediate measures would be taken to revive Musi, clean it and develop its river front in the line of River Thames, the Budget speech said.
Establishment of pedestrian zones, people’s plazas, and heritage zones in Old City, and protection of cultural heritage places are cited as part of the project, which will be partly funded through ‘monetisation of the river front’.
Providing a plan for decongesting Hyderabad and other regions, the Budget speech envisioned the state as three zones — Hyderabad inside Outer Ring Road as urban area, the region between ORR and the proposed Regional Ring Road as peri-urban and the area beyond RRR as rural zone. Separate plans will be prepared for all the three zones, it said.
GHMC
However, no support was announced for the financially beleaguered Greater Hyderabad Municipal Corporation (GHMC), which is currently bogged down under the debt burden accrued from road development projects of the previous regime. GHMC officials, nevertheless, expressed optimism that funds to the tune of ₹1,000 crore would be allocated from the overall funding for bailing out the corporation.
The speech was not without its political tinge though. Ascribing the landmark achievements such as establishment of IT sector, Hyderabad Metro Rail, the international airport, ORR and other infrastructural facilities of international grade, to the previous Congress regimes, the Minister took a dig at the previous BRS regime, saying that the wealth created through the development of Hyderabad was not meant for a few officers’ or leaders’ selfish gains but, belonged to people as a whole. “With this aim we are cleansing all systems,” he said.
