The Ministry of Defence has finally set up a committee to separate civilian areas of the Secunderabad Cantonment and merge them with the Greater Hyderabad Municipal Corporation which has been a longstanding demand of the residents of the area.

While the rest of the twin cities have seen construction of flyovers, Metro connectivity and other infrastructure developments, the residents of the areas under the Secunderabad Cantonment Board were caught in a time warp which was further agonising for them since the local military authority have kept 21 key roads closed in the cantonment.

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The Defence Ministry has now set up the committee to decide on the modalities “for excision of civil areas of Cantonment” after the Municipal Administration and Urban Development (MA&UD) Department of the Telangana government conveyed its “in-principle concurrence and no objection for excision of civil areas of Secunderabad Cantonment and its merger with adjoining Municipal Corporation/ Municipality of Telangana state.”

The eight-member board that includes MA&UD secretary of the state government will decide on key issues such as land and immovable assets, Cantonment Board employees/pensioners, Cantonment funds, Civil Services, movable properties and stores, road management and traffic, records and submit its report to the ministry within one month.

Two years ago, as residents vented their grievances against lack of civic amenities in the Cantonment area state MA&UD minister KT Rama Rao took to Twitter and asked the residents to respond if they want their areas to be merged with GHMC. Majority of those who responded to his tweet favoured the proposal.

Moreover, the resident associations which were fighting a long battle over the closed roads even signed memorandums in support of the proposal. A meeting between Rao and army officials including GOC Dakshin Bharat area last year also paved the way for the decision.

“We have been demanding the merger of Secunderabad Cantonment into GHMC for a long time. This will help the Telangana Government in taking forward Strategic Road Development Project (SRDP) and other infrastructure projects expeditiously. It is the Union Government’s adamant refusal to part with land that held up proposed skyways for over seven years,” wrote KT Rama Rao on Twitter on the initiative of the defence ministry. The state government in the past had repeatedly sought 160 acres of defence land to build two skyways.

There has always been a controversy over who owns the Cantonment land since under the Subsidiary Alliance signed by the Nizam II the British troops were stationed in the State of Hyderabad. The Nizam allocated an area near Hussain Sagar which came to be known as Secunderabad after Nizam Sikander Jah but the land ownership remained with the Nizams which had then passed on to the state government