Construction of the proposed Secretariat building will start at the Chest Hospital near Erragedda in Hyderabad as soon as the designs are ready.

The Telangana Government will start work on the construction of its new Secretariat building at Chest Hospital near Erragadda as soon as the design of the premises was complete.

Roads and Buildings Minister Tummala Nageswara said at a press conference on Thursday that the Government had already placed order for the design of the multi-storied complex to come up on the sprawling campus of the hospital which will house not only the offices of Secretaries to Government but heads of departments also. The hospital will be relocated to Vikarabad.

Referring to his discussions with Union Surface Transport Minister Nitin Gadkari, who was in the city on Wednesday, Mr. Rao said that he had requested conversion of 1,018 km of State Highways in Telangana into National Highways. The length of national highways in the State was 2,592 km now.

If the request was conceded, Telangana will touch the all-India average of national highways in any State. Mr. Gadkari assured to consider the request at a meeting of the concerned officials in the Surface Transport Ministry within a fortnight, Mr. Rao added.

Mr. Gadkari also assured the Government of considering its request for sanction of Rs. 2,000 crore for construction of roads in extremist-affected areas. The amount was raised because the Centre had included Adilabad, Karimnagar and Warangal among the districts requiring infrastructure development to overcome backwardness and extremism. Earlier, Khammam was the only district in the category.