Telangana Chief Minister K Chandrasekhar Rao is angry at the NDA government for selecting Hyderabad city under 'smart city' project.
KCR opined that Hyderabad is already more than a 'smart city' and has developed as a A-1 city on par with Mumbai over the years.
He felt that giving a tag of 'smart city' to Hyderabad is nothing but to belittle the city.
KCR dashed off a letter to union urban development minister Venkaiah Naidu on Thursday expressing his resentment over Centre selecting Hyderabad as smart city.
"GHMC itself has an annual budget of Rs 5,500 crore. Under smart city status, the Centre allots just Rs 100 crore for development. For a city which already has a budget of Rs 5,500 crore, in what way Rs 100 crore would be sufficient?" KCR asked.
He requested Venkaiah to treat Hyderabad as a special city and allot special funds for the development of city to provide world-class infrastructure facilities to meet future demands.
KCR asked Vekaiah to remove Hyderabad from smart city list and instead replace it with Karimnagar.
He said, "The Centre should come out with special schemes to develop metro cities like Hyderabad instead of clubbing metro cities with smart city project.
As per the committee appointed by union urban development ministry in 2011, Hyderabad requires over Rs 30,000 crore investments to develop key sectors.
It needs Rs 1,270 crore per year towards operation and maintenance costs alone. In this scenario, how a meagre Rs 100 crore to be allotted under smart city scheme would be sufficient to improve facilities in Hyderabad."
