Major Developments in Hyderabad – November 2013

In the month of November, the city experienced cold winds and showers that made the weather cool and pleasant. In Hyderabad, cold winds led to further drop in mercury. The minimum temperature was 14 degrees Celsius, the lowest in November.

The month of November also witnessed the festival of lights Diwali and Muharram.

Some of the major developments in the month of November include proposal to merge panchayats withdrawn, Hyderabad airport bags best cargo airport award, premium services through ‘meeseva’, traffic volume being studied at key junctions, intermediate exams to open with English, increase in vegetable prices, etc., had a significant impact on the normal daily life routine of Hyderabadis.

Read on to get a brief view on the major developments that took place in Hyderabad city during the month of November.

General

• The proposal to merge 36 gram pranchayats has been withdrawn in the Greater Hyderabad Municipal Corporation (GHMC). As an alternative, the government has decided to either change them into nagar panchayats or municipalities.

• The 18th International Children’s Film Festival was held in Hyderabad. The festival was scheduled from 14th November to 20th November and about 200 films were screened across 26 venues in the city. Approximately 1.5 lakh children viewed 200 films from 48 countries.

• The city recorded the lowest minimum temperature at 14.1 degree Celsius on November 15th. The city was under the grip of an intense cold wave. It was also learnt that the minimum temperature in the city was four degrees less than normal.

• The prices of vegetables in the city rose steeply. The reason for the rise in vegetable prices is because of cyclone Phailin, that damaged a large extent of crops in the state.

• Large number of child labour cases has been reported in Hyderabad. It is found that many children are employed at commercial establishments, hotels, grocery shops, as domestic help and at construction site. Most of the children are migrants from Bihar and Odisha. Some families send their children to work as domestic help due to lack of financial resources.

• In the city, areas like Bholakpur in Musheerabad, slums in Khairatabad don’t have proper sanitation facilities. The defunct public toilets have left no option for the people, but to defecate in the open. There are about 284 public toilets in the city and a considerable number of these toilets are in a very bad condition.

• Very soon the city will experience its first 9D theatre that will screen animated movies on aquatic life, environment and lake concept films. The theatre will have a seating capacity of more than 25 people and will be set up at the laser complex inside Lumbini Amusement Park.

• A three day international symposium on applied aerodynamics and design of aerospace vehicles was held in Hyderabad. Nearly 600 delegates, comprising of aircraft designers, theoreticians, scientists and students, attended the symposium.

• The Rajiv Gandhi International Airport (RGIA) has been awarded the ‘Best Cargo Airport of The Year’ at the 40th Annual Convention of Air Cargo Agents Association of India (ACAAI) that was held at Jaipur.

Service

• Citizen service centres have stopped issuing birth/death certificates at GHMC municipal circle. Instead, a separate ‘MeeSeva’ counter has been opened, where one needs to pay Rs. 45 to obtain a certificate. Earlier Rs. 20 was being charged by the service centres to obtain a certificate. Because of the rise in price many citizens are not preferring to take the certificate.

• Passports gets additional security feature ‘letter screen image’ (LSI). According to the, ministry of external affairs the new feature will be implemented in passports. This feature tries to eliminate replacing of data and photographs in the passport.

• Very soon the city will have a replica of Bombay Stock Exchange Ltd. (BSE), that will act as a data recovery site (DRS) and a back-up bourse. The BSE Mumbai and Hyderabad stock exchange will switch operations from time-to-time, so that they can protect the operations and financial system in the event of any accident or terror strike.

• Areas like Kondapur, Madhapur and Gachibowli don’t have access to drinking water because there is no systematic network of drinking water pipelines. Due to which many companies and residents are forced to rely on packaged water and water tankers.

Real Estate

• The number of transactions and amount collected shown by Stamps and Registrations Department of state government for April-October period show that the real estate sector in Hyderabad has grown for this period of the year compared to the same period of 2012. Even areas of the city where real estate is thought to be stagnant, there occurred a good amount of transactions.

• The Hyderabad Metropolitan Water Supply and Sewerage Board (HMWS&SB) asked for better water connection in multi-storied building. HMWS&SB told the ownership of such buildings to make to replace the half-inch by three-fourth of an inch within one month, failing which authorities might penalize according to rules under HMWSS&B Act, 1989.

Roads and Transport

• Hyderabad traffic police conducted a study on traffic volume at Panjagutta, Hotel Taj Krishna, KCP, Monappa Island, Shaliminar Junction, Ameerpet and NFCL rotary junction to asses the lean and peak hours of traffic moment at each junction. This is an attempt to change the current traffic flow pattern to reduce traffic congestion.

• Traffic police brought a major changes in current traffic scheme at Lakdikapul to reduce traffic congestion. Under this scheme, motorists coming from Ranga Reddy Collectorate, Nampally and Ravindra Bharathi junction will get uninterrupted carriage way to move towards Masab Tank.

• The Unified Metropolitan Transport Authority (UMTA) finally approved the report of Comprehensive Transportation Study for the Hyderabad Metropolitan Area (HMA) 2041. It was estimated that the investment would be around Rs. 4,000 crore to Rs. 6,000 crore.

• The first metro train is going to arrive into the city form Korea during the third week of May 2014. It is equipped with the advanced radio frequency signalling system with the capability of 80 kmph. Trials will start from June 2014 to February 2015, before boarding on the first stage of the Nagole-Mettuguda sector.

• APSRTC is conducting training to the drivers who drive high-end AC buses across the state to ensure the safety of passengers during emergency situations. This training is offered by the experts of Volvo, Mercedes, Ashok Leyland and Isuzu. In the course of training, the experts will teach these drivers about the safety measures, precautions to be taken during the emergency situations and other technical aspects.

• Hyderabad city traffic police got PDA technology, which helped them in recovering 93% of penalty dues in the current year. In 2008, they recovered only 27% of e-challans and in the year 2009 they recovered 50% with the induction of old PDAs.

• According to the Comprehensive Long Term Transport Plan formulated by the HMDA, city will have 360 km of metro rail network, 428 km of MMTS network and 360 km of bus rapid transport system (BRTS) by the year 2041. HMDA invited public to give their objections and suggestions on the Draft Intelligent Transport Systems (ITS) Master Plan for HMA.

Health

• Despite many concerns raised by the environmental activists on adverse effects of burning the garbage on health of the people as well as on the environment, there has been no stop towards it across the city. According to the social activist, awareness programmes should be conducted by authorities for all workers and citizens, as it is high time for informing them the most basic aspect of sanitation in the city.

• The GHMC that carries out mosquito studies regularly in different parts of the city collects the insects and calculates their density by numbers, and found a higher density of mosquitoes along the belt of river Musi. However, the number of malaria and dengue cases have been dropped when compared to last year.

Education

• There is a change in the exam pattern this year by the Board of Intermediate Education. It will be conducting English language as first paper. This change comes after 8 years in order to drive away fear of English among many students especially the Telugu medium.

• Intermediate BiPC students will not be dissecting cockroaches, earthworms, frogs, etc., during their practical exam. The Board of Intermediate Education decided the abolition of dissection according to the directions by Union environment Ministry and the University Grants Commission, thus believing dissection to be a cruel practice.

• Hyderabad Metropolitan Development Authority (HMDA) rejected the Building Penalizing Scheme (BPS) applications of 69 professional colleges and other institution for not following the rules for regularization.

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