Vastness of open lands, a modern sewage treatment plant, and extensive commercial space are a few of the features boasted by the KCR Nagar, the newly-launched mega township project by Greater Hyderabad Municipal Corporation at Kollur in Sangareddy district which is being portrayed as the Asia’s largest government-funded social housing project.
According to the engineering officials, the constructed area is only 14% of the total 145.5 acres of the site, which works out to about 108 homes per acre. Availability of such large extent of open space is a luxury not afforded by even the most expensive gated community projects in and around the city.
With open spaces comes the need of lighting them during nights, for visibility as well as safety. Add to this the 120-feet Master Plan road going through the community and the STP with capacity to treat nine million litres of sewage per day, you will have the electricity charges shooting through the roof.
It however, has not occurred to GHMC to follow its own rules and install solar power generation units to meet the electricity needs of the community, so that the much showcased township can sustain on its own in future.
The civic body has violated the very building norms it seeks to enforce, by not installing solar panelling for water heating and lighting requirements inside the community.
The Municipal Building Rules, issued in 2012 by the Andhra Pradesh government and adopted by the Telangana State after its formation, seek to enforce compliance with the National Building Code, with regard to high-rise and non-high rise structures.
According to the code, in all projects of group housing where the number of units are equal to or above 100, provisions for solar water heating systems and solar lighting systems should be in place. The solar lighting system should cater to the lighting requirements in the building as well as outdoors, the norms mention explicitly.
The applicant for building permission should furnish a bank guarantee to this effect to the sanctioning authority for compliance of the same.
Though Kollur 2BHK township falls under the purview of the Tellapur municipality now, building permission was applied for before the municipality was formed, through a single window cell constituted under the GHMC Commissioner exclusively for granting permissions to the double bedroom housing projects. All the applications pertaining to the 2BHK projects were cleared through the cell which had representation from the stakeholder departments such as HMDA, Fire Services, State Environment Impact Assessment Authority, and even Airports Authority of India.
Though the building permissions were automated through the Development Permission Management System (DPMS), the 2BHK projects were granted manual permissions in circumvention of the bank guarantee provision.
The bank guarantee for Kollur project would have costed less than ₹4 crore, a minuscule portion of the total project cost of ₹1489 crore.
When queried, HMDA Commissioner and Special Chief Secretary Arvind Kumar said solar water heating will be part of the external facilities that will be taken up by HMDA along with school, police station, playground and urban health centre.
