Ramanthapur disaster was ignored for a week

HYDERABAD: Failure to act against decades of encroachment on Ramanthapur lake’s bed coupled with lackadaisical attitude of the authorities in tackling flood related disaster are clearly two reasons why about 100 shanties of daily wage workers, cellars of apartments, houses, hospitals and main roads are submerged for more than a week  following recent intermittent rains. All the buildings that are submerged are located on the lake bed. Speaking to mediapersons on Monday, mayor Bonthu Rammohan said that none of them have got required permissions to construct the buildings. The Hyderabad High Court had ordered last year that all the encroachments on Ramanthapur lake bed have to be demolished and the lake should be protected with fencing. 

However, the Greater Hyderabad Municipal Corporation (GHMC) has not done anything citing “opposition from locals”. It is a known fact that in many wards corporators themselves support encroachment of lake beds for votes. There have been incidents of GHMC officials who went for demolition of illegal structures getting harassed by corporators and their goons. 

Crux of the issue
Ramanthapur lake has a Full Tank Level (FTL) of 32 acres as per GHMC and has now been shrunk to about 22 acres, the rest being encroached. Due to intermittent rainfalls for a week, the water level in the lake has increased. There have been heavy inflow of water from nearby uphill areas and from a lake in Osmania University. 

Even with all these inflows, the lake has not reached its FTL level.  However, as the lake does not have any sluice and its outlet. Only a single pipeline lies at FTL level which is above the current maximum level of water in lake. As a result, excess water does not flow out through the outlet which has led to flooding of all buildings located on its lake bed . 

Government authorities react after a week 
It took a week for authorities to take notice of Ramanthapur flooding that occurred on October 2. It was only on Monday that a meeting was convened of GHMC commissioner, mayor, Medchal district collector and officials from HMWS&SB, irrigation department and National Highways Authority of India (as the road adjacent to Ramanthapur lake belongs to NHAI), Uppal MLA and Ramanthapur corporator. Till Sunday, about 4-5 pump sets were put to use to drain out excess water from the lake.  All the top bureaucrats, officials and politicians were busy brainstorming till late afternoon on Monday. 

In the meeting, GHMC officials proposed that high Horse Power (HP) pump sets should be used to suck water from the lake and channel it into outlet located above the water level in Ramanthapur lake. 
In the meeting, an official of Larsen & Toubro said that two pump sets located in Ramanthapur and Uppal stadium would be provided soon. However, no such pump set was arranged. GHMC said that it will arrange 140HP pump sets on Tuesday. However, in the evening GHMC decided to dig up and break a part of the outlet pipe and that was choked with silt. As water levels increased in the lake after rainfall in the evening, the excess water started flowing through this outlet.