JOIN USThe city’s battered roads are in a state of oblivion in the newly added areas. Not only are they in bad shape due to poor maintenance but they also suffer from lack of an identity. No name, no number.
The Bruhat Bengaluru Mahanagara Palike (BBMP) is yet to give the lanes and bylanes an identity, categorising them as cross roads and main roads. This has triggered confusion in identifying the exact location of a place.
The Palike admits it as a problem, but says it is helpless. Nagaraju, BBMP’s chief engineer of Rajarajeshwarinagar zone, says the problem is more in the revenue pockets of newly added areas.
He explains: “We understand the difficulties caused by the lack of identity of roads. There are more than 50 revenue layouts in our zone alone and they have not been regularised yet. Identifying them as cross roads and main roads will appear as if BBMP is regularising them,” says Nagaraju.
So, what is the problem? He says until the Akrama-Sakrama scheme of regularising revenue pockets is implemented, it will not be possible to give identity to the lanes and bylanes. “The matter of Akrama Sakrama is pending before the Supreme Court. Till the court decides, we will not proceed,” he makes it clear.
There was a serious deliberation on this issue in Bommanahalli zone recently. The zonal authorities were in the process of kickstarting the road identification project shortly. However, the project was dropped for the time being as the focus shifted to the Palike’s rain preparedness.
BBMP joint commissioner Muniraju says, “I recently had a discussion with the corporators and other Palike officers. There is an urgent need to give numbers to the roads. We need funds to put up boards there.”
He agrees that the problem is more in the newly added areas, unlike the core Bengaluru, where each road has got an identity.
The president of Citizens’ Action Forum D S Rajshekar says that the new GIS-based property identification numbers may affect the core areas of Bengaluru too if the old numbers are replaced.
“Prior to GIS-based PID numbers, there was a certain mechanism to identify the properties and accordingly door numbers were given. If that is changed to replace with GIS based PID numbers, it will cause a lot of problems,” says Rajshekar.