Finally, street lights on ORR functional

Finally, the street lights on the Outer Ring Road (ORR) are glowing, following the intervention of District In-charge Minister S T Somashekar and Urban Development Minister B A Basavaraj.

The lights were defunct due to an issue between Mysuru City Corporation (MCC) and Mysuru Urban Development Authority (MUDA) in connection with taking up maintenance and paying electricity bill. Following the non-payment of electricity bill, Chamundeshwari Electricity Supply Corporation was not supplying power.

In a meeting, the minister assured of paying the electricity bill of Rs 1.15 crore and also directed Cesc to supply power with immediate effect.

The six-lane ORR, measuring 44 km, has a total of 2,168 electricity poles and 1,268 lights, under MCC. The remaining are under the limits of various gram panchayats and MUDA.

It has to be recalled that it was a long-pending issue. When G T Devegowda was district in-charge minister in JD(S)-Congress coalition government, he had made several attempts to resolve the issue. But, it remained unsolved.

Later, previous district in-charge minister V Somanna also tried to solve it. Somanna had advised the MCC and MUDA to share the bill. But, it was not implemented.

Due to lack of lighting, crime rate was a little high on the stretch. Even the rate of accidents were high due to lack of lighting. The lights were glowing only during Dasara.

MUDA developed the ORR and handed it over to the National Highway Authority of India (NHAI). But, ORR lacks maintenance of lights as neither MCC nor MUDA were ready to take up the responsibility.