Telangana Chief Minister K Chandrasekhar Rao’s fad for new and exotic projects is unabated, though many of his earlier ideas could not see the light of day.
After the historic Osmania Hospital building, a heritage structure, the TB Hospital building in Viqarabad and many other such places, the eyes of the Chief Minister have now fallen on the State Secretariat buildings as he wants to replace them with a ten storied massive structure over 5,00,000 square feet in accordance with the Vastu Sastra.
If he has his ways, the new project, for which a plan has been chalked out will cost the exchequer Rs1,200 crore.
The Chief Minister wants the blocks A, B, C and D in the existing Secretariat complex to be demolished a new single 10 storied building should be constructed within a year.
Famous design engineer and architect Hafeez Contractor has already prepared and handed over the plan for the new building but it was planned over an area of 1 million square feet. The Chief Minister has now asked him to prepare a new plan for half the area.
The design of Hafeez Contractor had envisaged a U shaped Secretariat building on the lines of the North and South Blocks in New Delhi. But KCR rejected it on the ground that it will cover the Secretariat Blocks presently under the use of Andhra Pradesh Government.
A meeting of officials chaired by the State Chief Secretary Rajeev Sharma decided that all the departments presently working out of the Blocks A, B, C and D will be shifted to nearby Borgula Ramakrishan Building on temporary basis.
This is not the first time that the KCR has come with such ideas to change or shift the key Government buildings and construct new buildings in accordance with Vatsu Sastra or Vedic science of building structures.
Such is his belief in the Vastu system, believed to be source of good fortune, that he never takes any measure decision in matter of changing residence or office without consulting the Vastu experts.
It was because of this belief that he made many changes in the plans to occupy a new official residence after becoming the Chief Minister in June 2014.
As he was averse to stay in the official residence used by former Chief Minister YS Rajasekhar Reddy and others, a new residence was planned by merging three separate quarters occupied by the top bureaucrats in Kundan Bagh. But after it was redesigned at a huge cost to the exchequer he rejected it and instead decided to occupy the camp office adjacent to the official residence in Begumpet.
But later he again changed the mind and got a new residence building built behind the present camp office as he was apprehensive that the old building was not propitious enough for him. This has cost Rs35 crore to the exchequer.
However his other plans including the razing of the heritage structure of Osmania Hospital were nixed after a massive public uproar. He wanted to replace with a new swanky building.
Now another similar move was in the pipeline to build a massive Assembly building and shift the legislature from the present location. The white color building with beautiful and intricate minarets where the Assembly was located for more than six decades was built during the reign of the 6th Nizam Mira Mahbub Ali Khan as a Town Hall.
Now the state Speaker S Madhusudhana Chary was toying with the idea of constructing a new sprawling complex for the legislature with the state of art facilities at a new location as the present building was not sufficient to meet the requirements.
KCR’s plan for constructing a new secretariat building has evoked sharp reaction from the opposition Congress. The party MlA K Venkat Reddy said that the Chief Minister was behaving like the crazy king of yore Tuglaq because of his insecurities. “The Chief Minister has no right to misuse the public wealth in this manner. He is doing it to benefit contractors”, he said.