Telangana government has issued orders on to scrap the GO 111, and constituting a high-level committee to frame guidelines and detailed regulations for the development of the area that comes under the catchment area of the Osmansagar and Himayatsagar reservoirs.
About GO 111 order
- The GO 111 order is the 1996 order for protection of two reservoirs, Osman Sagar and Himayat Sagar, which provided drinking water to the entire city for close to eight decades.
- With the scrapping of the GO, a total 1.32 lakh acres of land in 84 villages which came under the reservoirs’ catchment area, has been freed from the development regulations imposed since 1996.
- The state government has sought to justify the decision to scrap the GO, saying that the dependability of these reservoirs for drinking water has come down to 1.25 per cent now, compared to 27.59 per cent when the GO was issued.
- The state government said that the GO 111 was issued to prohibit polluting industries, major hotels, residential colonies and other establishments that generate pollution in the catchment area of Osmansagar and Himayatsagar reservoirs . This was done with an objective of protecting the catchment area of these two reservoirs which were the main source of drinking water to Hyderabad city at that time.
- The government says that these two reservoirs are now accounting for 27.59 per cent of installed capacity of drinking water, when the GO 111 was issued. However, since the total installed capacity of drinking water for Hyderabad has grown up from 145 Mgd to 602 Mgd, and an additional 344 million gallons a day (MGD) is also under execution, as a result drawals dependability of these reservoirs is less than 1.25 per cent.
