Telangana Secretariat on pause mode

Hyderabad: It may be a month-long holiday for the Telangana Secretariat, which is currently being shifted to various buildings in Hyderabad. This shifting of premises has affected the routine administration.

Chief Minister K. Chandrasekhar Rao (KCR) had performed the foundation-stone ceremony in June last week for the construction of a new building complex at a cost of around Rs 200 crore. The construction and inauguration of the new building is expected to take at least 18 months to two years, according to officials.

The issue of building a new secretariat had been pending for the last five years as Chief Minister KCR refused to work from the existing 30-acre complex which he feels is not only “vastu incompatible”, but also not sufficient for modern governance. Initially, he wanted to build a new secretariat at Secunderabad Bison Polo Grounds, a 30-acre Defence Ministry property.

The conditions imposed by the Ministry of Defence included, allotting double the area of land to it elsewhere and a one-time payment of Rs 120 crore, plus some annual payments for a period of 10 years.

Moreover, half of the premises of the Secretariat in Hyderabad were occupied by the Andhra government, even though the buildings were lying vacant for the last four years. Former Andhra Chief Minister Chandrababu Naidu had built his own make-shift Secretariat in Amaravati in 2016 and shifted the staff and day-to- day administration, but he refused to hand over the Hyderabad buildings to Telangana.

Naidu’s argument was that as per the AP Reorganisation Act, Hyderabad would be the common capital for both the states for a period of 10 years, till 2024, so they had every right to occupy the buildings allotted to them till then. 

But, the KCR government was in dilemma on accepting these “unbearable conditions” until the end of elections last year.

After Y.S. Jagan Mohan Reddy replaced Chandrababu Naidu as CM in Andhra, the former agreed to vacate the Andhra allotted buildings in Hyderabad secretariat, as a goodwill gesture between him and KCR.

This facilitated KCR to build a state-of-the-art secretariat at the existing location, but all offices and staff had to be shifted to other buildings in the city. KCR has set up a committee headed by Roads and Buildings Minister Vemula Prashant Reddy to search for new offices. The committee couldn’t find one single building where the entire secretariat can be relocated and opted to shift it to a score of office complexes in the city.

At the same time, the Telangana High Court is hearing a batch of writ petitions challenging construction of new Secretariat as well as the Assembly at Errum Manjil complex, which is a heritage structure of Nizam era.

The petitioners, including some Opposition Congress leaders, have argued that the government was wasting huge public money, to a tune of around Rs 400 crore on these two buildings.