The GHMC is working full-time to make the city visually attractive. And for the first time in the state, a full-fledged park with all facilities will be coming up underneath the right and left sides of the Kamineni flyovers at LB Nagar.Similar parks have been developed underneath the flyovers at Shaikpet and Bahadurpura, but the park in LB Nagar will be fully equipped in about two acres. Right now, works are on for laying walking tracks and an amphitheater. The amphitheater will accommodate 50 to 60 people when ready. There will be walkways, fountains, sculptures, seating areas, a children's play area, lush green plants, a cafeteria, and parking facilities. In fact, the park has been tentatively named Oxygen Park, owning to the many green plants producing oxygen planted to neutralize air pollution.The entire park is being developed at the cost of Rs 1 crore by GHMC as a gift to the next generation. The LB Nagar flyover park will have a 750 mt walking track surrounded by trees and plants, vertical gardens decorating the pillars, fountains, sculptures, and a parking facility for two-wheelers and four-wheelers.The urban biodiversity wing of GHMC is developing the park while civil works are being done by the GHMC engineering wing. The civic body is hoping that the park will be a role model of sorts for other cities and states in the country.

Unique Oxygen Park Coming Up Under LB Nagar Flyover

It's a time when most people in Hyderabad are hooked on organic farming and would love to have the veggies and fruits of their kitchen gardens and veggie patches. But it has to be observed that a growing number of people are making use of their terrace spaces to grow a lot of varieties of fruits and vegetables.While many are happily growing a few vegetables or fruits, Saileela Darsha is one such enthusiastic farmer who has taken her hobby one step further. She has grown 200 varieties of vegetables on her terrace that include 26 types of tomatoes, 11 types of brinjal, 15 types of bottle gourd, and four types of snake gourd, apart from beans, carrot, green chilies, Donda, to all kinds of leafy vegetables.Not stopping there, Saileela Darsha also grows a good variety of fruits, including apples, sapota, grapes, guava, dragon fruit, and watermelon. She also has okra, a variety of ladies' fingers that grows up to 16 inches. Being an ardent farmer, Saileela also procures seeds from her friends in Kerala, which are known to grow a huge variety of vegetables through her friends.And like all organic farmers, Saileela uses cow dung and kitchen waste as compost which keeps her plants fresh and healthy. All this shows in the taste, says the home-maker-cum-farmer. Buoyed by her success, Saileela has started a YouTube channel Saileela Vlogs and posts regular videos about her farming practices.

Hyderabadis Finds A New Hobby In Some Terrace Gardening

A horrific incident took place in Gachibowli in the city. A student cut the throat of another student at the boys' Gurukul Hostel in Gowlidoddi. The incident caused a stir locally. The student suffered severe bleeding during the attack. He was rushed to Gachibowli Hospital for treatment.The incident happened on the 26th of this month but came to light lately. On that day, there was a clash between two students over breakfast. Sathvik was eating Upma and some of it spill over another student's hand. A heated argument happened and they were even abusing each other.&nbsp;The teacher intervened between them, pacified the students, and sent them away. One of the students is not convinced and attacked the other at midnight on the same day. The accused slit Sathvik's throat with a blade. Doctors say he is out of danger. A case has been registered over the incident and police are investigating.

Student Slits Throat Of Friend In Gachibowli

After Microsoft and Amazon have announced their second-biggest campuses in Hyderabad, outside America, another tech giant is all set to open its campus in Hyderabad. Google has announced that it will be setting up its largest campus in India in Hyderabad. The campus will be spread across 7.3 acres in Gachibowli's Financial District.The 3.3 million sq ft building will come up near Amazon's largest global campus, and the groundbreaking ceremony has also been completed. The company unveiled the design of its ground-up development at the site, and Telangana IT minister KT Rama Rao along with Google VP-India held the groundbreaking ceremony.The campus has been a long-held plan of the company, which is finally implementing the promise made to its employees. "Telangana and Google have enjoyed a long and fruitful relationship, and it already has one of the largest presence in Hyderabad. Google being a leader in the technology field, has helped the city and the State. I am pleased to share that Google is deepening its Hyderabad connection through a new 7.3-acre campus in Financial District. The building is over 3 million sq ft, and the design emphasizes on sustainability and traditional architectural elements," said KTR while announcing the partnership on various digital initiatives.Incidentally, Hyderabad city is home to Google's largest employee base, and they have ten different offices spread across Hitec City and Financial District with a total building capacity of 3 million sq ft. The new campus will add another 3.3 million sq ft to the existing capacity.Another insight is that Google intends to make investments in India, keeping the future in mind; hence the new campus will be developed over a period of many years, and the idea is to keep adding employees as and when required. The tech giant will be hiring people who will be solving problems for India, and in the process, they will be hiring big from the talent pool available in the city.

Google's Second Largest Campus in Hyderabad

The real estate in the city is surely and swiftly seeing an upward curve in Q2 of 2022. The pandemic and the following lockdown and slowdown across the country and supply chain constraints haven't impacted the realty market in Hyderabad city, and it continues to do good business.There have been new launches and improved sales in the post-COVID quarters, with 2021 seeing an all-time high in terms of yearly supply. According to a report by Anarock titled 'Riding the Rebound: Hyderabad Real Estate,' the sales increased almost three-fold in 2021 when compared to the past year, and 51,000 units were launched, which happens to be a 234 percent increase when came to yearly launches. Incidentally, Hyderabad also happens to be the most affordable residential market among the top seven cities, with an sq ft costing Rs 4450.About 25,400 housing units were sold in 2021, which is a 197 percent growth against 2020. In the first quarter of 2022, which is till March, 13,140 units were sold, registering the highest sales growth of 199 percent among all top seven cities in 2021.The report also says that the housing inventory overhang declined from 53 months in the first quarter of 2021 to 27 months in the same period in 2022. Given the various accelerators, Hyderabad has been on the interest radar of various stakeholders like investors, developers, and homebuyers. West Hyderabad saw major new launches in Q1 2022, accounting for 60 percent of the city's new supply, closely followed by north Hyderabad with 32 percent launches. East and south Hyderabad together saw 5 percent residential launches.As for the pricing, the high-end segment accounted for 51 percent, followed by the mid-segment at 29 percent and 11 percent in the luxury housing segment.

Hyderabad Beats Other Top 7 Cities in Terms of Housing Sales

Corona cases are slowly increasing in some states of the country for the past few days. The state is expected to see an increase in corona cases by June, the health ministry said. The positivity rate has increased from 0.15 percent to 0.3 percent in the last 10 days. Officials say the number of cases is likely to increase by June if it continues like this.However, they assure that thousands of cases are unlikely to come as in the past. When asked to comment on this, Public Health Director Dr. Srinivasa Rao said, "We are on high alert as cases are on the rise in other states." He said cases were likely to rise slightly by June.However, as everyone has already taken the vaccine and are antibodies in about 93 percent of them. So, it may not be a big risk, the ministry expects. The state had 40 corona cases reported Thursday, the health department announced. Tests were performed on 14,662 people across the state. No new deaths were reported.

Corona Cases To Increase From June: Health Ministry

GHMC Central Enforcement Division officials imposed heavy fines on flexes and banners set up in Greater Hyderabad during the TRS party earlier this week. In addition to the flexes that were put in place on Tuesday, many of them were set up on a large scale again on Wednesday. GHMC received over a thousand complaints on Twitter from the public in two days.However, the Enforcement Department officials imposed fines only on complaints received directly from the public. As a result, there were not even tens of complaints. Minister Talsani Srinivas Yadav was fined for more than Rs 2 lakh, the highest among all TRS leaders. Another MLA Danam Nagendar was fined more than Rs 1 lakh.Another MLA Kaleru Venkatesh has been fined over Rs 50,000. A fine of over Rs 10 lakh was imposed on various violations related to the plenary. More than a thousand complaints were received but only nominally fines were imposed. Also, the department allowed the ruling party leaders to deface the city and acted only after the plenary is completed as always.

GHMC Imposes Nominal Fines On TRS Plenary Flexes!

In a rather surprising and disturbing incident, a drone was spotted making rounds over Hyderabad Shamshabad airport. The drone was spotted on March 26, Tuesday night, at around 11 pm.The drone made rounds on the northern side of the airport, and the airport authorities share that the drone came up from the Mamidipally side and did rounds over the CISF housing community, GAMR Chinmaya School, Dharmagiri temple, and surrounding areas for about four hours.Usually, the planes that wait for the green signal from the ACT fly in this zone at a low altitude. Thankfully, on the night when a drone was spotted, there were no planes lined up for landing. This deferred any chances of collusion in the sky.It is prohibited to fly any drones in this zone, and the drone flew into the area despite this. The incident has put the security authorities on high alert. The entire area, too, has been put on high alert. Cyberabad police are investigating the incident.Drones have been spotted in sensitive zones in some parts of the country, giving rise to security concerns. Nowadays, drones are being used for civilian activities, though some areas are strictly off-limits.

High Alert Declared as Drone Spotted Over Shamshabad Airport

It’s Ramzan and that time of the year when people in Hyderabad stop thinking about calories and instead enjoy elaborate meals throughout the day. There is food and more food all over the city, and with home deliveries becoming a norm, there is a huge spike in the amount of food eaten. According to an analysis by Swiggy, there has been a 33 percent spike in haleem orders as compared to last year, and about 8 lakh biryanis were ordered since the beginning of the Ramzan season.It does sound like a lot of food indeed. But the food-loving Hyderabadis haven’t stopped there. In the 20 days since Ramzan season began, people have been gorging on traditional favorites such as chicken biryani, haleem, niharis, samosas, rabdi, malpua... and the list goes on.Many, in fact, break their fast with haleem, and this year, the popular types of haleem have been mutton haleem, special haleem, and chicken haleem or murgh haleem. Incidentally, nihari too was ordered about 30 times more than last year.Iftar time (usually between 5 pm and 7 pm) is the time when the orders are more, and there is a whole variety of foods that people order like paneer butter masala, chicken 65, and masala dosa. Meanwhile, the most popular Iftar snacks include samosa, bhajiya, rabdi, firni, malpua, and dishes made with dates. Orders were also high for gulab jamun, rasmalai, double ka meetha, tender coconut ice cream, and idlis. Swiggy says it received around 4.5 lakh orders in the city between 5 pm and 7 pm.

Haleem Orders Rise By 33 times, 8 Lakh Orders for Chicken Biryani

More and more people spend time on social media these days, and one of the outcomes of such activities is the increase in the number of sex and extortion cases. While there has been an increase in the number of cyber-crimes, there has been a steady rise in sextortion cases in the city.Such crimes are always conducted in a systematic manner, and the pattern is more or less the same. Usually, one member of the gang befriends people on Facebook through friend requests. Then once the conversations reach an intimate level, the member invites the person for a WhatsApp chat. During the chat, he or she is asked to chat nude. When the person obliges and strips on camera, the act is recorded on mobile phones, and the same clippings are sent to the person later to blackmail them.The police warn that even a 5-second clipping is used to manipulate the trapped persons into giving money. Huge amounts are demanded through online transfers as the victims are threatened that the videos will be made public or posted on social media.Sadly, already two people have lost their lives in the past few months. While one person was from Langer Houz, the other was from Nizamabad. KVM Prasad, ACP Cybercrime Hyderabad, has warned that in most cases, Facebook requests are sent by ‘beautiful women.’ According to ACP (Cybercrime), Rachakonda, S Harinath, many victims do not come forward to lodge a complaint as they fear social stigma.While gangs from West Bengal were known to indulge in such acts, now the police have been seeing an increase in gangs from Rajasthan and Haryana. Also, gangs from Alwar, Bharatpur, and Mewat, who were once known for e-commerce portal frauds, have now moved into sextortions, and Facebook and Whatsapp frauds, apart from QR Code scams. While some victims end up paying huge sums due to fear, the police have said that citizens should refrain from accepting Facebook requests from strangers.

Social Media Sextortionists On Rampage in Hyderabad

Are you a Hyderabadi and a traffic fine defaulter? Have the hefty fines burned your pockets? There is finally some great news for you, thanks to the Hyderabad Traffic Police. According to the reports, the Hyderabad, Cyberabad, and Rachakonda Traffic Police have offered a huge discount on traffic fines on vehicles registered with the GHMC.This special drive to be held from March 1 to 31 has triggered hysteria among the city commuters. After identifying a hefty backlog of over 600 crores pending challans, the city traffic police has now given a discount to those defaulters who clear the dues within this one month.The Hyderabad traffic police state that this move is a humanitarian gesture towards the citizens who faced financial hardships during the COVID pandemic.&nbsp;As a relief, the three traffic police departments have come up with the move to enable the citizens to ease their financial burden amid a decline in the COVID situation.Under the challan discount scheme, if the two-wheeler owners pay 25%, car owners clear 50%, and the RTC bus owners pay 30% of dues, the Telangana traffic police have now promised to waive off the remaining amount. However, the state police have maintained that only online payments are accepted while clearing dues.The traffic police department advises the motorists to pay challans during the drive. However, how much backlog the traffic department clears during the month-long drive needs to be seen.