HYDERABAD: With the roads and buildings department taking over 3.29 acres of the parking lot in Lumbini Park belonging to Buddha Purnima Project (BPP) for the proposed Telangana Martyrs Memorial (Amaraveerula Smruti Vanam), motorists visiting Lumbini Park are being directed to park their vehicles at the parking lots of nearby NTR Gardens. R&B department officials have barricaded the area and begun spade work on construction of a lamp-shaped memorial. They instructed BPP authorities to remove the advertising hoardings and empty the section offices.
BPP officials said parking is not being allowed inside Lumbini Park’s parking lot and visitors are told to park their vehicles at NTR Gardens where adequate parking space is available. After parking their vehicles NTR Gardens, they have to go to Lumbini Park on foot. It is walking distance between the two parks on the Necklace Road. A number of trees in the parking area would either be translocated or chopped off. In addition to the parking lot of Lumbini Park, the Telangana Tourism office, a few sections of HMDA and Hussainsagar Lake and Catchment Area Improvement Project divisional offices will also be demolished and the power substation shifted to another site.
R&B engineer-in-chief I Ganpati Reddy said that the contracting agency had to complete construction of the memorial in a year. Chief minister K Chandrasekhar Rao asked the officials concerned to commence the work as early as possible and see that the project is completed within the time frame. The memorial is being built for Telangana martyrs who laid down their lives for a separate state of Telangana. The chief minister had laid the foundation stone for it on June 2, 2016. The park around the memorial would exhibit the spirit of the martyrs and the Telangana movement, R&B officials added.
Costing around `80 crore, the memorial will come up in an area of about 3.29 acres, though it had been previously planned to build it 12 acres covering Lumbini Park, Lumbini Laserium building, BPP office and Hyderabad Boats Club. That plan was shelved to save the park and the laserium.