Moves afoot to scuttle Arkavathy Layout formation

Land owners’ pressure may hit Arkavathy

Vijay Times

Bangalore: The proposed Arkavathy Layout may hit another roadblock with some influential landowners allegedly pressurising Chief Minister N Dharam Singh to denotify their land.
Bangalore Development Authority (BDA) sources said some senior politicians and industrialists owned about 438 acre land in Rachenahalli, Nagawara, Thanisandra, Geddalahalli, Sampigehalli, Narayanpura villages, which come under the Arkavathy layout notified area.

One of them owns 131 acres in Rachinahalli and Nagawara villages, which are close to the Outer Ring Road and Bellary road. With pressure on, the Government had already denotified 81 acres of land belonging to a politician. However, the same persons are now pressurising the Chief Minister to denotify more land in the area.
Following this, the meeting held between the Chief Minister and the BDA Commissioner Vidyashankar on Wednesday, here, gains significance.

Sources told Vijay Times that BDA officials expressed their concern to the Chief Minister that if it further denotifies selective land, there could be a backlash from others who have already been expressing their anguish against the Government. A senior official maintained that if the entire 438 acres was denotified, the BDA would have to issue fresh notification to acquire more land to meet its promise of 20,000 sites.

Sources said the BDA had earlier notified 3,339.12 acres of land in Yelahanka and Kasaba Hobli in Bangalore North Taluk and KR Puram Hobli in its primary notification number BDA/Commr/ALAO/LA9/104/2002-03, dated February 3, 2003. But in its final notification (number UDD193:MNX 2004 Bangalore, February 23, 2004), it retained 2,750 acres land and denotified 589.12 acres.

So far, the BDA Land Acquisition Officer had awarded about 1,000 acres of the total 2,750 acres and the remaining is under process. Once the awarding is completed, the land comes under BDA’s control to compensate the land owners. Interestingly, sources said that “influential” persons were pressurising the BDA not to award their land. If the land was not awarded, it would be easy for the landowners to denotify it.