Bangalore's status as one of the most favoured cities by event managers seems to be taking a beating, thanks to quixotic behaviour of some police personnel.

Organisers of the much-anticipated Red Hot Chili Peppers rock concert, scheduled for October 13 at Gayatri Vihar on Bangalore Palace Grounds, got a taste of the way certain policemen function.

After having put in place a gigantic publicity machinery and infrastructure for a stage, the organisers had the fright of their life when they were told by Seshadripuram sub-division ACP R  Laxmana that the venue cannot be cleared on security, pollution and traffic grounds. They were even advised to shift the venue to the Main Palace Grounds, adjacent to Gayatri Vihar and accessible from the Jayamahal Road side.

Ruling
The organisers were bound by the police opinion, as a Supreme Court ruling of 1996 has made it mandatory under the Bangalore Palace Acquisition and Transfer Act that event organisers have to get written permission from the Department of Personnel and Reforms, which acts on the basis of the police clearance.

The ground owners and organisers of Red Hot Chili Peppers were not the ones to give up easily.
They managed to get in touch with higher-ups and finally obtained the police clearance to organise the event at Gayatri Vihar itself.

However, the experience of the organisers of Red Hot Chili Peppers is not new, as other event managers who have sought to stage events on various portions of the Palace Grounds - Gayatri Vihar, Indrakshi grounds and the main Palace Grounds  - will vouch for.

Nexus
For quite sometime now, several event managers have yielded to the machinations of the nexus between the unscrupulous elements in the City police. While some other operators who have erected permanent infrastructure like barricades, arches and other superstructure enjoy the patronage of a sitting MLA, who in turn shoots off letters to the Karnataka State Pollution Control Board and create confusion.

In the dark
Then, under the guise of granting clearance, the police raise frivolous objections on pretexts like inadequate security, access and pollution among other things and force the organisers to shift to the venue of their choice.
Though the owners of these three venues - the Mysore princely family scion Srikantadatta Narasimharaja Wadiyar and his two sisters - are to some extent in the dark, the City police do admit that there is more to things than meets the eye. DCP (Central) B N S Reddy agreed that there was lot of unnecessary confusion in this regard which would be sorted out soon.