SPVs in place to improve Hyderabad.

Good news to road users in the Greater Hyderabad Municipal Corporation limits. The much-awaited special purpose vehicle - Hyderabad Road Development Corporation Limited - for maintaining arterial roads in the twin cities has come into existence couple of days ago.

The HRDCL, to be provided with corpus of ₹ 1,500 crore, has been incorporated under the Companies Act with the Government providing ₹500 crore as its initial contribution. Another corporation, Musi River Front Development Corporation Limited has also been incorporated for beautification and development of Musi riverfront with a corpus fund of ₹500 crore.

The two corporations had been constituted for the comprehensive development of the city infrastructure by fostering effective coordination between the departments concerned as lack of coordination was hampering planning and development of infrastructure projects.

Accordingly, representatives from the concerned wings including the HMDA, GHMC, water works and traffic had been nominated to the boards of the two corporations.

It was proposed to provide ₹1,500 crore corpus fund to each corporation for taking up developmental activities. “There was no institutional structure for coordinating the functioning of the departments in the past. The two corporations are aimed at bringing cohesion in this direction,” a senior official of the Municipal Administration department said.

The first meeting of the board of directors of the two corporations is slated to be held on Thursday. The first meeting is expected to discuss the modalities for raising funds required for the corporations to carry out their operations as also the projects that should be prioritised for development. “It has been decided in principle to opt for bank loans as the State Government has agreed to give counter guarantee,” the official said.

The HRDCL would be entrusted with maintenance of 250 km of roads under the purview of the Roads & Buildings departments initially and this would be scaled up in the years to come. On the Musi river beautification and development front, the department had prepared draft detailed project report. This would be fine tuned and plans would be finalised once the extent of the lands owned by private entities and Government including those encroached was known.

THE HINDU