Govt buys more time for Metro take-off

After making—and breaking —several promises of an early launch, the State government has pushed the deadline for completing all reaches of the Bangalore Metro Rail project to March 2013. The previous deadline was September 2012 and two other, prior to the last one, were 2011 and 2010.

In his address to the joint session of the State Legislature, Governor H R Bhardwaj said the government would ensure that all reaches of the Metro project are commissioned by March 2013.

Under Phase I, there are four reaches besides the underground routes. Through the governor’s address, the government claimed that when it took over the reins of governance the Metro’s progress was 0.1 per cent and it now stood at 22.4 per cent with the construction of Phase 1 in full swing.

Work on the Byappanahalli-MG Road segment was progressing rapidly with 70 per cent completion.  This segment, Bhardwaj said, would commence operations by December 2010.

New layouts

The Yeddyurappa government, unmindful of protests and barbs from the Opposition, has declared that five residential layouts would be developed to meet the ever-growing housing needs of the people of Bangalore.

The final notification for acquisition of land for the Nadaprabhu Kempegowda Layout has already been issued, the governor pointed out.

For the Dr Shivaram Karanth Layout, preliminary notification has been issued and enquiry was on and preliminary notifications for the KC Reddy Layout, the Devaraj Urs Layout and the Nijalingappa Layout will be issued shortly. This would result in the distribution of 1.74 lakh sites by the BDA, Bhardwaj said.

The government said it has accorded top priority to develop Bangalore. The expected expenditure on development schemes by BBMP in 2009-10 was about Rs 3,100 crore against a mere Rs 1,035 crore in 2005-06. Likewise, the BDA’s development expenditure for 2009-10 is expected to be around Rs 873 crore against only Rs 145 crore in 2005-06.

The government also claimed that approval had been given for 12 signal-free corridors in BBMP’s newly added zones by upgrading arterial and sub-arterial roads.  Patting itself on the back for undertaking some urban development initiatives, the government said the GIS-based property tax system would make life easy for the people.

Based on a PPP model, the GIS programme is in operation in five towns across the State. It would enable registration of all properties and facilitate property owners to get a clear property title. The programme would be scaled up for other towns too in a phased manner. Referring to the retrieval of encroached land, the governor said 7.39 lakh acres of land which the government has identified would be protected.