Army reopens Bolarum road LMA in a fix over two closed roads

Hyderabad: Owing to public pressure, the Local Military Authority (LMA) opened the Sree Sai theatre road in the wee hours of Tuesday, just 24 hours after it had put up a barricade on Monday morning. Complaints from residents of the Secunderabad Cantonment especially from Bolarum, Alwal and neighbouring areas flooded the Secunderabad Cantonment Board (SCB).

The line of contention between the LMA and the Resident Welfare Associations (RWAs) has been the definition of ‘unit line’ road. “If there are Army establishments on either side of a road, it could be termed as a unit line road. But on one side of the Sree Sai theatre road is a civilian road,” says S Chandrasekhar of Open Secunderabad Cantonment All Roads (OSCAR). OSCAR, Federation of North Eastern Colonies of Secunderabad (FNECS) and other resident associations want the LMA to reopen the nine roads that have been closed for the past few years.

In a response to an RTI query by a resident of Alwal, the authorities said that six roads out of the nine were cantonment roads.

Later they said that there was a clerical error in the reply and two roads would be opened. When asked, how come there are just two roads out of nine that would be reopened, authorities say that under survey No (1) of 799, two roads bear the same road number.

The LMA is now in a catch-22 situation, as they themselves had committed in the RTI reply that the roads were closed by mistake. They are reluctant to divulge the names of the two roads that they closed by mistake.

In board meeting last month, vice-president of SCB J Ramakrishna stated that the two roads would be opened. “The SCB members called for a special meeting to solve the issue of toll tax, why there is such a delay on the issue of closed roads,” questions Chandrasekhar.