Banjara Hills Road No 10, the arterial road on which the ruling Telangana Rashtra Samithi’s party office Telangana Bhavan is located, caved in on Monday evening causing a traffic jam. Fortunately, no one was injured in the incident, which took place at around 6 pm. The caving in of the road created a hole that was 5 meters long and 5 meters deep. Authorities said that the road caved in due to an old leaking pipe that loosened the soil underneath the road. “Since yesterday was a holiday, there wasn’t much traffic on the road,” said an official.

As soon as the incident happened, traffic police barricaded the affected portion of the road and alerted the Greater Hyderabad Municipal Corporation (GHMC) authorities. This caused inconvenience to motorists using the road on Tuesday. Subsequently the GHMC and Hyderabad Metropolitan Water Supply and Sewerage Board (HMWSSB) were tasked with fixing the leaking pipe and the road. The GHMC said that it took more than nine hours to fix the problem.

Speaking to TNM, GHMC Khairtabad zone commissioner Musharraf Ali Faruqui said, “The leakage of an old pipe led to the incident. The HMWSSB stopped the leakage and we have fixed the road with concrete. Vehicular movement will be smooth in some time.”

This is not the first instance of road cave-in in the city. Since 2016, there have been as many as five such incidents reported in Hyderabad at NTR Marg, Tadbund, Malkajgiri and Jeedimetla. In a few incidents, motorists suffered injuries. In 2016, a major portion of the road in Safilguda, Malkajgiri caved in, seriously injuring three people. The authorities had reportedly dug up the road for laying a water pipe and filled the hole with loose gravel, which caused the caving in.

In 2012, a portion of Banjara Hills Road No 1 caved in resulting in a massive traffic jam. Traffic had to be diverted on different roads for at least three days as the road remained closed for carrying out repair works.