The Telangana government has conducted an in-house study on the feasibility of transferring land from the Secunderabad Cantonment Board (SCB) to the Greater Hyderabad Municipal Corporation (GHMC), said the Ministry of Defence on June 27 as it released the minutes of the meeting held on June 25. The meeting, led by Defence Secretary A. Giridhar, with senior State government officials, focused on the process of excising civilian areas from cantonments and merging them with municipalities.
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The document stated that the study would be reviewed by the excision committee in an upcoming meeting. The Defence Secretary mentioned that the proposal had been prepared by the cantonment board and instructed that it be processed further by the committee. With government orders to complete the excision, the merger of SCB with GHMC is closer to reality. According to guidelines from the Defence Secretary, proprietary rights over assets for civic amenities in the excised area will be transferred to the State government or municipalities at no cost. The assets and liabilities of the cantonment boards will also be transferred to the State municipality.
“This decision is expected to enhance infrastructure and civic amenities in the cantonment area, benefiting residents. The residents express gratitude to Chief Minister A. Revanth Reddy and MLA Sri Ganesh for facilitating the merger process,” said Sanki Ravinder Babu, General Secretary of Cantonment Vikas Manch, a NGO operating within the SCB area.
The Secunderabad Cantonment Citizens Welfare Association began advocating for this change in 2014, making representations to various Defence Ministers, including Arun Jaitley, Manohar Parrikar, and Nirmala Sitharaman, and continued efforts with Rajnath Singh. Their persistent lobbying led to the Ministry of Defence forming an expert committee to consider the merger, to which the association contributed detailed presentations. “This decade-long advocacy resulted in the government’s decision to abolish cantonment structures and merge them with local municipal corporations, acknowledging the hardships faced by civilians under old colonial rules,” said Jeetendra Surana, Honorary Secretary of the association.