HYDERABAD: The Telangana government, in its affidavit filed with the High Court on Tuesday on the proposal to construct new buildings for the Secretariat, Legislative Assembly and Legislative Council complex, said it was in pursuance of a decision taken by the State Cabinet.
The decision was taken in consideration of the larger public interest and broad vision, and the petitioners’ allegation of wasteful expenditure of public money on the said buildings is baseless and hypothetical, the government contended.
As the existing complexes Secretariat, Assembly and Council buildings — have no proper fire safety, security measures and required facilities, the construction of new buildings has become inevitable and provision of funds for the construction of new buildings would not hamper the implementation of ongoing government welfare schemes. The proposed buildings would be “green buildings” and would be energy efficient, the government argued.
In this regard, the government, represented by its principal secretary to transport, roads and buildings Sunil Sharma, filed common counter affidavits on the PILs filed separately against the demolition of the buildings.
Congress MP A Revanth Reddy and Prof PL Vishweshwar Rao, vice-president of the Telangana Jana Samithi, filed the PILs seeking for the court to stay the shifting of the Secretariat offices to other buildings and demolition of existing structures to construct new buildings.
While Dr Lubna Sarwath, social activist, OM Debara, president of Confederation of voluntary association, and J Shankar, PhD student from Osmania University, Noori Muzaffar Hussain and seven others, who claimed themselves as legal heirs of Nawab Safdar Jung who built the Errum Manzil, filed PILs seeking direction to the state government not to demolish the Errum Manzil building, a heritage structure in the city, for construction of a new State Legislative Assembly and council buildings in its place.
Another PIL was also filed before the High Court by Deccan archaeological and cultural research institution, represented by its founder and managing trustee K Jithendra Babu, seeking direction to the government not to demolish the said building. The government, in its counters, stated that it has taken the policy decision to raze the existing old structure of the present Secretariat complex and have a new complex in its place keeping in view the modern day administration requirements for delivery of effective public service to the people from Secretariat up to the village level.
There is a need to have a state of the art secretariat for Telangana, it noted and said it proposes to re-design and re-build the existing secretariat complex for the purpose. The existing buildings which have been constructed at different periods of time starting from the year 1888, in an ad-hoc manner and most of them do not satisfy even the basic planning parameters and do not meet primary requirements such as basic fire safety, security and so on.
Due to improper construction, haphazard location of buildings and old conditions of Secretariat buildings, it is not possible for the roads and buildings department to take up fire safety measures in the buildings without huge construction and breaking up of existing structures. Besides, there is an acute shortage of conference halls to hold meetings by 29 departments, it added.
As for the Errum Manzil building, the government stated that there is no designated legislature complex in Telangana state and the existing legislature building consisting of the town hall was constructed during the Nizam’s period. The entire complex consists of 25 rooms and five committee halls and there is inadequate accommodation to house the chief minister, speaker, deputy speaker, leader of opposition and ministers. The matters would come up for hearing on Wednesday.