Residents of Gautham Nagar in Hyderabad’s Kukatpally staged a protest on Thursday, June 29 after an internal road in their residential colony was damaged on Wednesday night, reportedly due to excessive underground construction works and blasts at a building site in the locality. The residents said that they have raised complaints with the Greater Hyderabad Municipal Corporation (GHMC) multiple times.
Residents questioned the authorities’ decision to allow the construction company to carry out large-scale construction in the middle of a residential neighbourhood. Meanwhile, GHMC started taking steps to evacuate residents from buildings in front of the construction site.
According to visuals from the site, there are cracks across the road that the residents use. Residents told the media that apart from the damage to the road, the blasts from the construction site are also affecting their houses. One resident said, “The works are being carried out 24 hours a day extensively. There are cracks on our walls due to the blasts. A major part of the road caved into the construction site on Wednesday night. Now GHMC officials are asking us to vacate our houses. They should have acted when we had complained earlier.” The residents also said that sewage pipelines were damaged and leaking into the site.
A senior GHMC official told TNM, “The residents in the locality were asked to vacate homes at night. The construction company stabilised the road by filling in sand. The residents are coming back.”
