Despite gruelling traffic, mayor 'travels' 200 km everyday

Travelling in Bengaluru may not be less than an adventure given the umpteen number of potholes, bewildering traffic jams, narrow roads and unscientific road humps at every nook and corner.

To add to the commuters woe, there are wheelies doing life-threatening drag races right in the middle of the roads. Yet, the Bengaluru Mayor B N Manjunath Reddy managed to travel at least 200 km a day, show the travel bills and the travel logbook of the Bruhat Bengaluru Mahanagara Palike (BBMP).  Mayor is no exception as his deputy Hemalatha Gopalaiah and chairpersons of the various standing committees are just following the Mayor in terms of travelling. On an average, the deputy mayor too travelled about 4,500 km a month, revealed the documents.

The Transport Department of the BBMP raises travel bills of Mayor, his deputy, and the 12 standing committee chairpersons twice a month. In five months, Rs 16.94 lakh has been claimed with an average of Rs 3.39 lakh every month.

These shocking revelations came out when Harish U filed an RTI application with the BBMP in the last week of April about the travel expenses, bills and logbooks. Zero response for a month forced him to file the first appeal, which compelled the Public Information Officer (PIO) to provide the information.

Harish said: “The documents showed that the Mayor travelled about 5200 to 5300 km per month except on Sundays and other off days. Deputy Mayor Hemalatha is no exception.” Reddy was inaccessible as he was travelling to Mysuru and his mobile was switched off. However, Hemalatha said, “I never travelled so much. I use BBMP vehicle only to travel from my home to the office and back. I take my personal car to travel outside Bengaluru and never use BBMP vehicles. The BBMP transport department officials seem to have misused the funds. I will speak to the Mayor in this regard and ensure that action is taken against the culprits.”

20 hours on road

Quite interestingly, a study by traffic expert Prof M N Sreehari revealed that the average speed inside the city is just nine to 10 km per hour, which means that the Mayor would have been spending at least 20 hours only behind the wheels.

Speaking to Deccan Herald  Sreehari said: “It is simply impossible for anyone to travel 200 km a day. It seems to be a case of bogus entries.”

The city traffic police, however, put the average speed in Central Business District areas at around 25 to 30 kmph during normal traffic hours. In peak traffic, the speed will be around 15 to 20 kmph for cars, they said. On the outer ring road (ORR), the speed could be a little higher, again depending on the traffic movement.