in their rush to flood the city with glitzy it parks and newage highrises government authorities seem to have conveniently turned their back on an important promise they made to hyderabads residents giving them sufficient open spaces the hyderabad metropolitan region has a meagre 378 of its area as planned open spaces out of the regions area of 489298 sq km open spaces account for only 22627 sq km whereas in most other places of comparable size they are in the 400650 sq km rangethats not all while the urban development ministrys urban and regional development plans formulation and implementation wing mandates that a city like hyderabad provides at least 10 sq m of green cover to every citizen the percapita open space available in the telangana capital is just 022025 sq myet the authorities are far from perturbed what else explains why 743 parks promised to be developed by the greater hyderabad municipal corporation gmhc in 2010 havent seen the light of day while officials blame it on budgetary restraints environmentalists arent in the least amusedover the years the local government has issued multiple gos government orders to protect open spaces ironically it has issued double that number during the same period to convert those spaces either into residential plots or sites for commercial development that speaks volumes about the governments intent rues captain j rama raoworse even the existing parks which according to ghmc records number 580 are in a deplorable state most have been encroached on by the real estate mafia while others have turned into garbage dumpsalmost every park has been subjected to some for m of encroachment there are electric transformers buildings and piles of waste at these open spaces nowlooking at them one can never imagine that they were originally developed for people to walk jog or simply breathe fresh air says ashwin kumar a resident of shantinagar masab tankon the other side of the city in serilingampally parks are nothing but new property hotspots there are 227 plots in our colony in rajender reddy nagar while the rest of the area within the gated community was designed to serve as a park or jogging track it has now been encroached on by an individ ual who claims to be the relative of a politician he is planning to develop a fresh crop of residential units in the area says k bhaskara reddy a member of the ngo janam kosam appalled by the governments apathy residents of himayathnagar filed a case at hyderabad high court on november 8 captain manohar sharma president uma nagar residents welfare association begum pet says in 2011 the ghmc announced that it would offer cash rebates to colonies that uphold the citys green cover though we have striven to do that no such benefits have come our way