Telangana Cabinet announces scrapping of GO No 111

Hyderabad: The State Cabinet, which met under the chairmanship of Chief Minister K Chandrashekhar Rao here on Thursday, has announced the scrapping of GO No. 111, which was issued in 1996 to prevent undue industrialisation and heavy construction activities in 83 villages and pollution of Osman Sagar and Himayat Sagar.

Briefing the media on the proceedings of the meeting, Minister T Harish Rao said the rules and regulations in force for the lands in the limits of the Greater Hyderabad Municipal Corporation (GHMC) would be applicable for the lands in the 84 villages in the revenue mandals of Shamshabad, Rajendranagar, Moinabad, Chevella and Shabad revenue mandals – all falling under the 10-km catchment area of Osman Sagar and Himayat Sagar.

Neither the city of Hyderabad nor the villages in the limits of the HMDA were any further depending on the two sources. The water supply to the city and the suburbs was largely depending on the waters drawn from Godavari, Krishna and Manjeera, and the State government had decided to do away with the GO No 111, as the people in all the 84 villages have been demanding for quite some time.

The Chief Minister had announced in April last year that the GO had become redundant. It was issued to protect the Osman Sagar and Himayat Sagar, which at that point of time, catered to drinking water needs of people of the Greater Hyderabad region. However, now, the State government had overcome the drinking water shortage that affected the capital region, and had created adequate alternate water resources, he had said.

Water supply was abundant with water being taken without difficulty through projects including the Sunkishala Intake Project and Mallanna Sagar, with Hyderabad not to face water problems for another 100 years, he had said.