Telangana to expedite Regional Ring Road works

Hyderabad, Jan 17 (IANS) Telangana Chief Minister A. Revanth Reddy has directed officials to expedite works relating to construction of Regional Ring Road (RRR) around Greater Hyderabad by completing the land acquisition within three months.

The chief minister, who is currently in Davos, Switzerland to attend the annual meeting of the World Economic Forum (WEF), has asked officials to remove all the hurdles in the development of RRR.

Land acquisition is pending for RRR, which is to be built on the other side of the Outer Ring Road (ORR).

RRR (north) to a length of 158.645 kms has been approved under Bharatmala Pariyojana first phase. The state government has to bear 50 per cent of the cost for acquiring required land.

Out of 1935.35 hectares of land to be acquired, 1459.28 hectares have been acquired so far.

Due to the non-cooperative approach of the previous government, there was no progress in land acquisition for the project for the last nine months.

According to the Chief Minister's Office (CMO), no effort was made with the National Highway Authority of India to remove the hurdles which resulted in the project being stalled. After the formation of 'people's government’ there is special focus on RRR.

To speed up industrial development, the state government is planning to divide Telangana into three clusters. There will be urban cluster within Hyderabad ORR, semi urban cluster between ORR and RRR and rural cluster beyond RRR. In this context, the chief minister discussed with the officials the need to complete the RRR project expeditiously. The completion of this project will ease transportation and pave way for the setting up of a semi urban zone, thus speeding up the development, he said.

He has directed officials to complete land acquisition in three months and call tenders for RRR (north) works. He has also urged the National Highway Authority of India (NHAI) to declare RRR (south) as the national highway and prepare a land acquisition plan for the same.

The chief minister made it clear that the state government is ready to bear any financial burden for completing RRR.