Industry bigwigs critical of Palike

It is ridiculous for Chief Minister Siddaramaiah and his ministers to go on a tour to count the number of potholes in the City, said urban planner R K Mishra at the Confederation of Indian Industries summit on infrastructure here on Wednesday.

Speaking at the event, Mishra hit out at civic agencies and said: “The problems of Bengaluru are like a big elephant and all the civic agencies and service providers are like the six blind men trying to decide what it is by touching it. It is ridiculous that the chief minister and his ministers would go on a City tour to count the number of potholes. The intention could be good but will it serve any purpose?”

Discussions on economic and infrastructure challenges, environmental issues and the ‘corrupt’ BBMP were the highlights of the summit.

Speaking about Bengaluru and Mysuru missing the Smart City tag, Mishra said, “Blaming the Centre for not including Bengaluru and Mysuru is not right. The Karnataka government itself did not recommend these cities for the Smart City tag as they failed to meet the criteria.”

N Venu, President,  Power Systems Division of ABB India Limited, said that it was time Bengalureans paused and look at what has been achieved so far. “However, there is inadequate infrastructure, economic and environment challenges. There is a need to increase expenditure on infrastructure.”

Meanwhile, Minister for Infrastructure Development Roshan Baig read out the budgetary provisions made for Bengaluru in the current fiscal. He said that the widening of Ballari Road, Jayamahal Road, Sarjapura Road, Bannerghatta Road, Dr Ambedkar (Tannery) Road, Dinnur Road, Varthur Road, Subratho Mukherji Road and construction of under bridges are some of the major projects to ease the traffic bottleneck.

Kamal Bali, Managing Director, Volvo India, set the agenda for the summit. He opined that the road map to a sustainable future lies in vision targets and goals, maximum usage of information and communication technology.