Hyderabad water board sits on 985-acre land bank

HYDERABAD: Hyderabad Metropolitan Water Supply and Sewerage Board (HMWS&SB) has a staggering 985.53 acres (nearly 1,000 acres) of vacant land in its possession in the city and outskirts.
The Water Board, which has 17 operation and maintenance (O&M) divisions in the city, has enough land for future needs.
The HMWS&SB has utilized a few acres of land for constructing offices and ground level service reservoirs (GLSRs).All properties under the board are being maintained by general managers concerned who would send a report on the status of vacant land once in six months to the head office.
Soon after Telangana chief minister K Chandrasekhar Rao asked all government departments to identify vacant land in their possession, the HMWS&SB authorities took up a survey in 17 O&M divisions and six project divisions.
"The HMWS&SB’s estate department has collected details of division-wise vacant land. During the survey, it was found that 44,34,928.26 square metres (nearly 985.53 acres) is lying vacant. The O&M-XI (Sahebnagar) tops the list with nearly 31,04,044 sq mts (690 acre) of vacant land followed by O&M Division-XVII (Bojagutta) with nearly 6,83,789.91 sq mts (151 acres) of vacant land, while O&M Division-III (Gudimalkapur) is at the bottom with just 10,017.34 sq mts (2.22 acres)," Water Board’s estate officer P Satya Rao told TOI.
Barring one or two locations, all parcels of government land are free of encroachments. "We are protecting our land by constructing compound walls and by constantly keeping a watch on the property," he said.
When contacted, HMWS&SB managing director M Jagadeeswar said, "We had conducted a survey of our land in the city in 2014. Now, on the directions of the chief minister, we submitted a detailed report, including availability of government vacant land and existing structures on our own land to the municipal administration & urban development (MA&UD) department.
"It is up to the government to take a call on how to utilize the board’s vacant land," the official said.