Save green cover

It is unfortunate that while chief minister B S Yeddyurappa was busy in  challenging JD(S) leader H D Kumaraswamy for a ‘truth test’ at Dharmastala and then retracting, his party cadres elected to the Bruhat Bengaluru Mahanagara Palike as corporators were hatching nefarious designs to strip Bangalore city of whatever green cover that is left. The BBMP’s proposal to widen the Sankey Road from Bhashyam Circle to Malleshwaram 18th cross has drawn widespread criticism as it involves the felling of hundreds of trees, but deputy mayor S Harish has announced that the Palike will go ahead with its plan as “it is necessary to meet the needs of a growing city.”

That the whole project is ill-conceived and non-transparent is evident from the fact that there is no clarity about many issues. While the executive engineer of the area in his report to the commissioner had pointed out that 526 trees will have be axed for road widening, Harish now claims that only 19 trees will be felled. There is also wide disparity in the assessment of traffic growth on this stretch of road, necessitating the widening.

The civic society campaigners have pointed out that the traffic on this stretch had soared only after a section of it was closed for building an underpass and once the work was completed there, the traffic on Sankey Road would ease. And shockingly enough, the chairman and members of BBMP’s technical advisory committee have pointed that the project had not been presented before the committee for approval.

The Tagore Circle underpass, which was taken up by the corporation two years ago despite stiff opposition from the public, is a monumental blunder of the BJP-led corporation. The project’s cost has soared, the project is nowhere near completion and it has turned out to be an environmental disaster affecting the local residents. The good thing about the Sankey Road widening project is that Commissioner Siddaiah himself has opposed it.

It is time chief minister Yeddyurappa stepped in to put a halt to the ‘raping’ of Bangalore being indulged in by the rapacious corporators of his own party in collusion with contractors. He should tell the BBMP to set in motion a two-tier consultation with technical experts and the citizen’s committees before taking up development works like road widening, underpasses, flyovers and overbridges. It cannot be left in the hands of a few elected representatives to decide the infrastructure needs of Bangalore.