HYDERABAD: Hyderabad Urban Development Authority (HUDA) Chairman D. Sudheer Reddy has categorically denied allegations that Outer Ring Road alignment changes were made to benefit a group of influential persons.

HUDA may contemplate legal action in future if baseless allegations continued, he said.

Reacting to questions posed by the BJP leader and former Union Minister of State for Urban Development Bandaru Dattatreya in the media, Mr. Reddy said though ORR was proposed during the TDP regime, it was later upgraded into an international project keeping the traffic requirements of the next 50 years. Accordingly, the access controlled expressway width was increased to 150 metres with additional features like flyovers, underpasses and junctions.

The alignment was changed in a few places either to avoid demolition of too many structures In other cases, the road was shifted 500 metres away from the Osman Sagar and Himayat Sagar lakes as per the directive of APPCB and another alignment shift was made to avoid bifurcation of Fab City following a specific request that vibrations due to traffic flow would affect its functioning.

Mr. Reddy said that a bend had to be straightened at Kandlakoya near Medchal and not a junction. And at Shamirpet, alignment was changed to save a steel factory with 600 employees and a portion of a water body from getting effected by the intended changes and not to favour any resort.

He said if anybody benefited out of the changes finalised by a six-member IAS officers committee, it was purely coincidental and not intentional. HUDA was prepared for any judicial inquiry into the projects taken up during the last two years.

Reacting to TDP president N. Chandrababu Naidu's charge that HUDA had spent public money on advertisements to clarify allegations levelled by a Telugu daily, Mr. Reddy said "It is our duty to put facts before people" as rejoinders given by HUDA were not being given same prominence like allegations.

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