As many as 150 corporators and five co-opted members of the Greater Hyderabad Municipal Corporation will soon be going on study tours at the expense of the taxpayer. Though within the country, their trips are likely to cost Rs 1.25 crore. The corporators will go on tours for 10 days in four different batches from the third week of this month.

The GHMC will spend Rs 80,000 on each and this includes air fare, accommodation, food and other facilities etc.

The Lokayukta, which took a serious view of the study tours, has put a rider this year that the groups visiting different cities should submit detailed reports about the best practices being implemented in those cities and whether such practices are suitable for Hyderabad. It was dismayed at their choice of destinations and had also sought explanations from the GHMC as to how the earlier trips helped in developing the city.

GHMC officials told Express that corporators wanted to study implementation of city development plans in matters of public health, sanitation, town planning, engineering, advertisements, collection of property tax and others.

The Majilis Ittehadul Muslimeen (MIM) corporators will go in two batches batches. One batch will go to Northern cities like Amritsar, Chandigarh, Jaipur and Ajmer while another batch will visit Thrissur, Kochi, Kozhikode and Trivandrum. The Congress planned the study tour to Mumbai, Pune, Ahmedabad and Jaipur while the Telugu Desam and BJP planned to visit Mumbai, Udaipur, Jodhpur and Ahmedabad.