GHMC puts demolition drive on hold

After pulling down 388 structures on nalas and 216 on lakes over the last week, the GHMC’s demolition drive has been put on hold.The claims of Chief Minister K. Chandrasekhar Rao to demolish 28,000 encroachments petered out even before the figures could touch one per cent.

Until a fresh survey called “Samagrah” (ground inspection) is done by the GHMC, no further demolitions will take place.GHMC offices, however, will continue to issue notices to illegal buildings (those constructed without permission) and demolitions will be taken up as



usual. This also reveals that in the past one week, the GHMC had been demolishing unauthorised buildings without any survey. The new survey is likely to allow many, including the major violators, to escape the axe.

GHMC commissioner B. Janardhan Reddy said, “To get more clarity and further details on the encroachments, a committee has been constituted for the Samagrah survey to identify encroachments by involving revenue, survey settlement, GHMC engineering and town planning departments and senior officials of various other departments.