HYDERABAD: After seven long years of waiting and one extension of deadline, the World Bank has decided to drop the project for remediation of the polluted Noor Mohammad Kunta (NMK), as part of the Capacity Building for Industrial Pollution Management Project (CBIPMP).
The ‘project status and rationale for restructuring’ report by World Bank cited uncertainty over land ownership, in certain parts of the lake, as the reason to drop the project. Located adjacent to Katedan Industrial Area, the Noor Mohammad Kunta was once popularly known as the ‘Pink lake’, a phenomenon caused due to pollution.
The NMK remediation project was sanctioned in June 2010 at a cost of Rs 284 crore. The deadline was set as September 30, 2015, and later extended to September 15, 2017. However, no actual work has happened on the ground till date.
According to the World Bank, of the allocated Rs 284 crore, only Rs 79.7 crore has been spent so far. However, this money was not utilised for actual remediation efforts but for ‘capacity building’ measures, like improving infrastructure of Telangana State Pollution Control Board laboratory.
Another Rs 84.6 crore had been promised for similar capacity building measures by March 2018. A TSPCB official who did not want to be named said the project component that has been dropped is only lake remediation. “There are other components for which deadline is March 2018.”
The report adds that another `117 crore, that was to be paid by the International Bank for Reconstruction and Development and International Development Association, has been canceled based on a request from Ministry of Environment, Forests and Climate Change. This was due to uncertainity of the project’s implementation. This money would have helped clean the lake.
Telangana government had formed a steering committee consisting top bureaucrats to implement the NMK project.
Although it has been seven long years, the then Andhra Pradesh and present Telangana governments did not manage to gather the ownership details of the lake land. It was only a couple of months back, after a direction from Hyderabad High Court, that Rangareddy District Collector ordered a survey to identify ownership of the land.
Rs 284 crore was sanctioned for the project that was commissioned in 2010 and was to be completed by September 2017.