The Andhra Pradesh Pollution Control Board has leveled allegations of pollution against various bulk drug units manufacturing drugs in excess of the permitted quantities.

The charges also include pharmaceutical firms responsible for unauthorised manufacture of these drugs. Despite permission being taken to manufacture a certain quantity and category of drugs, these units allegedly exceed the prescribed limit, by more than 30 per cent in certain cases. The huge amount of resultant effluents are not treated and the excess drugs, according to the APPCB, add to the pollution in the city.

Citizens of the peripheral areas in Hyderabad will continue to suffer drinking water shortage for at least two more years due to a delay in the implementation of the Krishna Phase-III, as the state government has sanctioned a meagre Rs 30 crore for execution of the Rs 1,670 crore project.

The Hyderabad Metropolitan Water Supply and Sewerage Board has little money to take up works on the Krishna Phase-III, and the Water Board is already mortgaging its properties to raise loans for the execution of the Godavari drinking water project for Hyderabad city.

The Central Government has directed Reliance Industries Ltd. (RIL) to sign gas sales and purchase agreement (GSPA) with NTPC and 10 other city gas distribution (CGD) companies to supply gas from the KG-D6 fields.

Recently, Communist Party of India (Marxist) Rajya Sabha member Tapan Sen had, in a letter to Prime Minister Manmohan Singh, pointed out to interventions and action of the Prime Minister's Office (PMO) to help private gas and power producers while ignoring the interests of its own PSUs.

Open plots reserved for development of parks and green belts in the city are becoming breeding grounds for diseases. The situation is even worse in posh localities such as Jubilee Hills and Banjara Hills.

People are using the open plots to dump garbage and as open air lavatories. The Greater Hyderabad Municipal Corporation-owned “park land” on Road Number 78 of Jubilee Hills is a classic example of how vacant land and open plots are being misused with officials of the civic body turning a blind eye.

The Planning Commission deputy chairman Montek Singh Ahluwalia cautioned Chief Minister N. Kiran Kumar Reddy against delay in the execution of Hyderabad Metro Rail project. “The delay in the implementation the project could lead to huge cost over-runs,” Dr Singh told Mr Reddy, when they met on Wednesday to discuss the state plan outlay for fiscal 2012-13.

With water crisis slowly taking on alarming proportions, substandard packaged drinking water, without proper labels and ISO certification and quality checks, are more freely available in the market, raising risks of contracting water-borne diseases.

With the Water Board failing to supply adequate safe drinking water, residents are forced to buy water from private companies. But water bottles or pouches of many companies are sold without proper labels or adequate quality checks, officials said.

The Water Board and the Secunderabad Cantonment Board are accused of minting money by selling water through mobile tankers instead of supplying it by the pipeline network.

Citizens naturally wonder why, if water is available for thousands of trips made by tankers, it is not available though the pipeline distribution system.

The ban on use of below-40 micron plastic carry bags has gone for a toss in the city with the Greater Hyderabad Municipal Corporation seemingly uninterested in enforcing the ban.

The Survey of India, compiled in 1975, marked around 1,000 water bodies with unique aquatic flora and fauna in the state capital. In fact, Hyderabad then was called the “City of Lakes”. But that was then.

When the HMDA did a count a year ago for the Lake Protection Committee, the officials could list only about 400 lakes in areas within its jurisdiction. Signi-ficantly, experts said, the number of waterbodies that have disappeared would be higher, considering HMDA’s jurisdiction comprises four districts. And if the ‘disappearance’ of about 600 lakes in 35-odd years isn’t alarming enough, even waterbodies that still exist have shrunk, with encroachments on the periphery.