Theft in Hyderabad, has forced the city’s municipal body to remove planter boxes with potted plants and the vertical garden that it had installed in the city, ahead of the Global Entrepreneurship Summit (GES).
The Greater Hyderabad Municipal Corporation (GHMC) was forced to take action, after a reported 58 out of the 500 boxes, which were displayed from Kondapur junction to Gachibowli Flyover, were stolen.
The Times of India reported that the cost of each box was Rs 6,000, and pegged the total value of stolen property at Rs 3,48,000.
“The remaining animal-shaped planter boxes have been removed and placed in Annamayya Dammam in Hitech city. GHMC officials will look after the boxes during daytime. At night, people who maintain the Annamayya Dammam will take care of the pots,” Rajender from GHMC horticulture department told ToI.
Another 5,000 flower pots that were set up near the Hyderabad International Convention Centre (HICC) as part of two vertical gardens were also reportedly stolen.
The GHMC said that they would install CCTV cameras in the area, to identify the miscreants.
“We will be replacing the flowering plants in the vertical gardens with plants similar to those present in the GHMC offices. With non-flowering plants, we can avoid theft and plucking of the flowers by people,” a GHMC official told Deccan Chronicle.
Cases have also been registered at the Gachibowli and Madhapur police stations under Section 379 (Theft) of the Indian Penal Code (IPC).
Last month, United States President Donald Trump's daughter and White House advisor Ivanka Trump had visited the city to participate in the Global Entrepreneurship Summit (GES).
The GES brought together 1,200 entrepreneurs, investors and ecosystem supporters for two-and-half days of training and mentoring sessions, networking and investment matchmaking. The two-day summit began on November 28.
Since the event was also attended by Prime Minister Narendra Modi and several prominent personalities, state authorities had bent over backwards, and gave the city a facelift within a matter of weeks.