Hyderabad: The Telangana government has proposed an allocation of Rs 1,500 crore for the Musi riverfront development project in budget 2024-25 which was unveiled by Deputy chief minister Mallu Bhatti Vikramarka in the state Assembly on Thursday.
In his Budget speech, Vikramarka stated that the project is proposed to revive the eco system around the Musi River, and it aimed to improve 110 km of urban area in and around Hyderabad.
“As part of the project, recreation zones, people’s plazas, children’s theme parks and entertainment zones will be developed,” he said, underlining the project’s main aims being the establishment of economic zone, improvement of living standards, protection of heritage and culture, improving the image of the city, improvement of infrastructure etc.
He further stated that the State government has already undertaken a socio-economic survey with 33 teams from the revenue department in pursuance of those aims.
“Development of Musi will be done on the lines of the Thames Riverfront Project in London. This project will be a milestone in the history of Hyderabad and its model will be fit for replication across the country,” he added.
It is pertinent to mention that before the union budget, Chief Minister A Revanth Reddy, along with a team of ministers met union Jal Shakti minister Chandrakant Raghunath Patil in Delhi, requesting the Centre to allocate Rs 10,000 crore for Musi rejuvenation and riverfront development. However, the Centre has not particularly made any allocation in the budget for the same.
Revanth Reddy had announced recently that the State government was going to spend Rs 1.5 lakh crore on Musi rejuvenation and riverfront development project in the next 5 years. BRS working president KT Rama Rao had questioned how the cost of the project that was estimated to be Rs 50,000 crore during the BRS government, got escalated to Rs 1.5 lakh crore all-of-a-sudden.
In last year’s budget, the previous state government had estimated an allocation of Rs 200 crore for Musi riverfront development, but it was later revised to Rs 50 crore.
