After Revanth Reddy's London visit in January this year, he fancied the idea of replicating Thames River Development in Hyderabad. Subsequently, there has been a heated debate on the chief minister's motives and whether it is feasible.
Published Oct 20, 2024 | 6:00 PM ⚊ Updated Oct 20, 2024 | 7:41 PM
File image of Musi river. (Creative Commons)
The BRS led by former Telangana chief minister K Chandrashekar Rao ideated and initiated the works of the Musi Rejuvenation Project in 2017. It was estimated to cost around ₹16,800 crore. Now, Chief Minister A Revanth Reddy’s ambitious Musi Riverfront Project, modelled on the lines of one on the Thames river in London, is expected to cost ₹1.5 lakh crore.
After Revanth Reddy’s London visit in January this year, he fancied the idea of replicating Thames River Development in Hyderabad. Subsequently, there has been a heated debate on the chief minister’s motives and whether it is feasible and how it would turn the lives of the Musi dwellers lives upside down if they have to be relocated.
The BRS claims that its project had a human face. It aimed at cleansing the waters, improving the look of it by making it a perennial river with diversion of Godavari waters from Kondapochamma Sagar, protecting ecology and even triggering economic activity. However, the party said, there were no plans evicting the people who live on the Musi river bank and its buffer zone.
There has been a slanging match between the ruling Congress and the Opposition BRS. The Congress blamed the BRS for turning the Musi into a river similar to Styx.
Revanth Reddy even dared BRS leader KT Rama Rao (KTR), among others, to live on Musi river bank for three months and said if they did not run away from there, he would abandon the project.
Former chairman of the Telangana State Public Service Commission and political analyst Professor Ghanta Chakrapani, who has studied the project in detail as long back as in 2014 and even suggested a plan to KCR who included it in the party’s manifesto, says the original project is better.
“I gave the broad contours of how Musi river could be rejuvenated when KCR visited me to finalise plans for reconstruction of Telangana ahead of 2014 elections. KCR gave his views on Musi rejuvenation as he knew a lot about the river. Later I summarised what KCR had said and sent it to him which became part of the TRS (now BRS) manifesto,” he told South First.
Even now Chakarapani believes that the project would be successful and would not leave anyone feeling betrayed.
He said it was possible by making Musi dwellers, the stakeholders in the project.
“The Musi dwellers have been living there for more than three to four decades. You cannot just evict them. By doing so, you are disturbing their emotional connection with the river and depriving them of their livelihood. If the river bank were to become economic zones, let the Musi residents be made part of it. Anyway, Revanth Reddy himself is saying it would take about six years. Why is this unusual haste now? This phase should come last and not first,” he said.
According to BRS working president KTR’s own admission, the Musi Rejuvenation or Revitalisation (the two words are being used interchangeably by the BRS), does not envisage evicting the people.
“We can develop the project even when the people live there. That is the difference between us and the Congress,” he said.
He further said that there was no need for ₹1.5 lakh crore for a project.
“It could be done with just ₹25,000 crore. We left behind all the plans and designs while leaving the office. Let Revanth Reddy take a look and implement them” KTR had said.
Chakrapani agreed with KTR on the objectives of the project conceived during the BRS regime which did not want to evict the people either in FTL or the buffer zone of the project.
The project had envisaged all the details as to how to protect the interests of the people and at the same time turn the stinking drainage channel which Musi has come to be known into a perennial river throbbing with vitality.
“The Revanth Reddy government says that it wants to evacuate everyone in the buffer zone too which, it is said, extends upto one km. This is quite impracticable. For instance, the government would not only have to clear Bapu Ghat but also evacuate vast stretches of lands which the Indian Army owns in the Langer Houz area. How can the government do it?” Chakrapani questioned.
A tributary of Krishna, Musi originates in Ananthagiri Hills near Muchukunda in Vikarabad forest, 90 km west of Hyderabad. It courses for 267 km and then merges Krishna river at Wadapally in Nalgonda district.
For a very long time, Musi river has remained neglected. The 1908 floods which claimed the lives of about 15,000 people had become a distant memory.
There were no major floods later on as after the great deluge in 1908 the then Hyderabad Nizam Mir Osman Ali Khan who was moved by the plight of the people, requisitioned the services of satestman-engineer Mokshagundam Visvesaraya.
He had two major reservoirs built — Osman Sagar and Himayat Sagar — which acted as defence against floods.
When Hyderabad experienced about 20 cm rainfall in 2020, the enrochements in nalas that became ubiquitous by then caused severe flooding in parts of Hyderabad which had brought the Musi project back into reckoning.
The Musi river became a stinking river because of severe pollution on account of rapid urbanisation. It has turned into a drainage channel carrying sewerage and industrial waste generated in Hyderabad.
According to one estimate, about one lakh people live in the FTL and buffer zone of Musi river in Hyderabad.
According to KTR, in 2015, the Central Pollution Control Board came out with a report on polluted rivers in the country and Musi was figured in it.
The report said that at Nagole, in the Rangareddy district, Biochemical Oxygen Demand (BOD) was 34 mg/l while in Hyderabad, it was 23 mg/l. According to CPRC, the unpolluted natural waters have a BoD of 5 mg/l, drinking water should have less than 1 BoD, and wastewater from a sewage plant should have a BoD of around 20 mg/l.
The BRS government, towards the end of its first term in power, decided to do something about Musi. In 2017, it created Musi Riverfront Development Corporation Ltd to implement the project.
The broad features of the project were: Ecological improvement, infrastructure development, pollution abatement, and rejuvenation which had the components of enhancing the environment of the river, creating a vibrant community, and green spaces.
Ater the creation of the corporation, the BRS, in its second term after 2018, began the implementation of the project.
It developed a five km stretch along Nagole-Uppal Bhagayath without dislocating the residents. The BRS government, to make the Musi a perennial river, decided to divert Godvaari waters from Kondapchamma Sagar to Osman Sagar in Gandipet.
For cleansing the waters of Musi river, it had been decided to treat the water that flows in the nalas before it joins Musi. The BRS wanted to ensure 100 percent sewage treatment and decided to set up 31 sewage treatment plans (STPs) with a capacity of 1,200 mld.
The government had begun constructing them with an outlay of ₹3,886 crore. Most of these projects are already operational and the remaining are near completion.
The sudden floods in 2020, made the state government launch Strategic Nala Development Programme (SNDP) and by 2921 it had completed the first phase of the project by implementing 60 projects at a cost of ₹985 crore.
Even though the BRS wanted to take up the second phase of the SNDP with an investment of ₹5,000 crore, it could not since the Congress came to power in the state in December 2023 scrapped the SNDP Phase II.
In its second term, the BRS, as part of the Musi project, had focused on urban mobility and connectivity too. The state, after allocating ₹545 crore for 15 bridges across Musi, got cracking with the work.
One integrated Outer Ring Road (ORR) west-East Expressway alongside Musi was planned at an estimated cost of ₹10,000 crore. The planning design has been completed and was ready for tenders and implementation.
A global design competition was conducted by the Municipal Administration department for nine reputed firms across the globe.
When the BRS government was about to take up the rejuvenation part of the project, it became clear that a few thousand people had to be relocated from Musi riverbank.
According to KTR, it was at this stage that KCR had put his foot firmly down saying that under no circumstances, the Musi Dwellers should be touched. He asked the officials to focus on revival of the river without displacing the poor.
KTR also listed a few milestones during his presentation to the media recently.
Chakrapani said that even though KTR argued ₹25,000 crore was enough, it might go upto ₹40,000 crore to ₹50,000 but it is still a lot less than ₹1.5 lakh crore.
“If Revanth Reddy begins the project with ₹1.5 lakh crore by the time it nears completion in about six years, the timeline which the chief minister himself had set, the total expenditure might go further up to ₹2.5 lakh crore or more,” he said.
He also discounted Revanth Reddy’s claim that so far the commitment for the project was only for ₹141 crore, since, according to him, it is the fee for the consultants.
“Usually, consultants charge one percent of the total project cost. If the fee charged by them is ₹141 crore, then the total project cost is somewhere close to ₹1.5 lakh crore.” he said.
Apart from this, there is so far no response from the government to the allegation made by KTR that the state government had hired Meinhardt as one of the five companies that formed into a consortium to prepare a detailed project report for Musi Rejuvenation Project.
KTR had alleged that in Pakistan, red corner notice was issued against the company for doubling the estimates for Ravi river within six months after assigning the work.
The state government, on the other hand, has double-downed on ng ahead with the project.
On 19 October, Revanth Reddy said that the project would move forward, come what may and also cleared a proposal to send a delegation to Seoul, comprising journalists and officials headed by MP Chamala Kiran Kumar Reddy from 21 October to 24 October to study river front development in the South Korean capital.
(Edited by Muhammed Fazil.)
