BMIC project: House panel wants excess 10K acres returned to owners

'Recover Rs 1,500 crore collected as toll illegally by NICE'

A Legislative Assembly committee is learnt to have recommended that about 10,000 acres of additional land being acquired for the controversial Bangalore-Mysore Infrastructure Corridor (BMIC) project should be returned to the original owners, most of whom are farmers.

The committee, headed by Law and Parliamentary Affairs Minister T B Jayachandra, has said that the project requires 20,193 acres whereas an extent of 28,000 acres had already been acquired.

Additional 10,000 acres that is being acquired should be returned to the farmers. If not, compensation should be paid to the landlosers  as per the Land Acquisition Act, 2013, the committee is learnt to have stated in its 400-page report.

The committee is likely to submit its report in the Assembly on Friday. The project promoter, Nandi Infrastructure Corridor Enterprise (NICE), has violated the agreement its has signed with the state government by not constructing concrete road in the section ‘A’ of the project, comprising peripheral road, link road and a portion of expressway. Peripheral road and link road should have been concrete roads as per the agreement. Instead, the promoter has laid asphalt road.

Besides, the NICE has been collecting toll from the road users illegally. The government had given permission to collect toll from 2002 to 2012. But, the company has been collecting toll even after 2012, the report is learnt to have said.

The company has been collecting about Rs 88 lakh as toll every day. The total amount of toll collected between 2012 and 2016 is estimated to be about Rs 1,500 crore. Steps should be initiated to recover this money from the company, the committee suggested.