Giant Hyderabad district to throw up gigantic disparity

Hyderabad is bound to be asymmetrically largest urban district in Telangana with the government deciding to create more new districts, but experts feel the move will create a huge disparity between the capital district and the rest.

In place of 17 new districts proposed in the draft notification, chief minister K Chandrasekhar Rao now wants to create 21, taking the total number of district in the state to 31. There is demand from political corners for more districts.

While the new districts are to be carved out of the nine existing districts, boundaries of Hyderabad will remain untouched. As a consequence, there will be a large scale imbalance between Hyderabad and other districts in terms of population. While other districts will have seven to eight lakh population on an average, Hyderabad is going to be the district with over 40 lakh people living within its territory.

"I agree it is going to be a peculiar scenario after the district reorganization. We should also agree that Hyderabad is the capital zone that deserves a special position including urban peculiarity. In fact, we discussed this aspect when the chief minister convened consultation meetings on Sunday and Monday. After weighing all pros and cons, the government has decided to keep the existing boundaries of Hyderabad untouched," said TRS Rajya Sabha member K Keshava Rao, who heads a high-level committee appointed by the chief minister to look into the issue of creating more new district.

Hyderabad district falling into Greater Hyderabad Municipal Corporation (GHMC) limits with a geographical area of 217 square kilometers has 39, 43,323 population as per 2011 census. If its boundaries are kept



untouched, then the district ends up as the largest, housing nearly 12 per cent of the total population of the state that is around 3.5 crore.

The main problem, which would arise out of this skewed district reorganization, according to the observers, is an unmanageable disparity in terms of providing equitable opportunities particularly in jobs and education.

"The new districts with minuscule population will have more jobs as they will get new revenue divisions and mandals. Whereas, in Hyderabad the number of jobs remains the same as the existing boundaries are not being altered," said Mamidi Narayana, president of Telangana Udyogula Sangham.

As per the proposal being considered, each district will have at least three revenue divisions and seven mandals, whereas Hyderabad has only two revenue divisions covering sixteen mandals.

With little scope of new jobs coming up in Hyderabad district post reorganization, the present zonal system for ensuring reservation in job and education for locals would come in the way of getting justice to people of Hyderabad in terms of opportunities.