State of the CMCs: Bommanahalli and Yelahanka

This is all the road Bommanahalli has. Begur Main Road has been reduced to slushy pools

Only tears, no water in Bommanahalli
Times of India

Bommanahalli: Sonaram Chowdry, who runs a shop here, spends a huge part of his weekly earnings on buying water. A tanker of 4,000 litres costs him Rs 200. “There is a borewell, but there is hardly any water in it.’’

The sewage drains are open and the only sources of water are the borewells that are drying up. Three BDA layouts — HSR Layout 6th phase, Mico Layout and Vijaya Bank Layout — get water from the BWSSB. The other residents either buy water from the far-away road where Bangalore’s Silicon Valley is located or live a ‘dry’ life on many days of the week.

As for roads, Chowdry has a shop on Begur Main Road, a one lane thirty-five-foot-wide road, hemmed in both sides by slush pools and petty shops that make the road even narrower. Roads have not been asphalted and “no major work in the CMC has taken place in the past two years. We have only been maintaining the area,’’ admitted C.M. Rajendran, commissioner of the the CMC. “A lot of illegal construction has come up in the area and the narrow roads cannot take the heavy volume of traffic,’’ he added. Swallow this: The CMC has 17,500 buildings with khata. 9,900 sites are vacant. A whopping 23,000 buildings on revenue land are unauthorised. Another 27,000 sites are unauthorised. Illegal construction touching Bommanahalli skyline has seen a drop in the property tax.

Stop these encroachments

Yelahanka: Residents who have been living on the banks of Yelahanka old town lake have seen it shrink every day.
“In the last six years, so many illegal residential constructions have come up that the tank has reduced in size by at least 25 per cent. And because the borewells here are aplenty, the lake has become a dumping place for all — factories, residents, and a place for animals to bathe. No one drinks that water.

Piles of garbage are either lying unattended or are burning on surfaces that definitely cannot be called roads.
“Yeshtu mosquitoes, specially in the night,’’ said Ruksana Banu. She said that apart from the garbage piles that attracted mosquitoes, a lot of them invaded her house because she has four-day-old stale vessels.

She asked, “where is the water to clean them? We get water once in four or five days, for a few hours.’’ In some parts of the 41 wards that the CMC covers, there is underground drainage, but houses have not been given connection.

“These were laid many moons ago, some time in 2002; but even now we have not been able to use the UGD,’’ said Manjunath V.N. Here. At the CMC office, there are at least four entries every day demanding streetlights. The ad hoc committee set up in 2002 by the Urban Development Department had stated that of the 3,454 streetlights, 1,036 need replacement.

WE THE PEOPLE
CELEBRITY
John Devraj, who runs the Bornfree School in Banjarapalya : The funds are allocated, but are they used in an appropriate manner is the big question. A few people take the decisions and I think they are politically motivated many a times. People’s participation should also be encouraged for better administration.

AAM JANATA

Manjunatha N., resident of Yelahanka : The area is very dirty. This garbage outside my house has been lying here since so many days. Files and mosquitoes are so many, they can kill anyone. No one comes to clean the area. We have lodged so many complaints but who is bothered?