Whitefield, Electronic city encroach green-belt

Whitefield, Electronic city encroach green-belt
Vijay Times

With the IT majors threatening to move out of Bangalore because of haphazard and unhealthy growth comes another threat which people are hardly aware. This is the large-scale encroachment in the green zone, which was marked to balance the eco-system inside the City.

According to the current Comprehensive Development Plan (CDP) prepared by the Bangalore Development Authority (BDA), the City has 682 sq.km of green-belt, accounting for 53.32 per cent of the Bangalore Metropolitan Area (MPA). However, the CDP itself admits to encroachment, saying several lay-outs and two big townships had already come up in the green-belt.

Meanwhile, officials in the Town Planning department say on condition of anonymity that green-belt is no more than a mere concept for Bangalore City since it was no where mentioned in the law nor it was within the controlling capacity of any civic authority. According to them, green-belt was marked only in papers and maps.

What the government is yet to answer is why it allowed Whitefield and the growth of Electronic City on green zone.
The BDA seems to have fought a long battle to safeguard the green-belt, originally a Western concept implemented for the first time during the regime of late Ramakrishna Hegde.

Following its successive failures to suspend construction activities in the Green Zone, the authority has now cordoned off 100 metre radius area around 331 villages as an attempt to discourage further encroachment there.
Ebenezer Howard, who coined the word green-belt, describes it as : '' a notified land around the urban limit predominantly agricultural in use. It should be marked in order to check further growth and to preserve special character of the City.''

Now the BDA is all set to redraw boundary of green-belt in its new CDP expected to be prepared shortly. Green -belt serves as a sink for pollutants, it checks the flow of dust and brings down noise pollution levels.
The encroachment in the green zone is partly blamed on seven city municipal councils (CMCs) and one town municipal council which come under the Bangalore Metropolitan Area.

Soon after the green-belt was marked, the State Government had told all the CMCs not to authorise real estate activity in the area. However, CMCs sanctioned development plans on lay-outs. BDA remained a mute spectator as it had no authority to reign in the CMCs. ''The only option left with the BDA to preserve the remaining part of green-belt is acquisition of entire green belt zone. But it costs the authority a large amount of money which it cannot afford,'' says a BDA official wishing not to be named.

However, there is good news. Bangalore is nurturing the country's biggest urban forest spread across 400 acres of land owned by Army Supply Corps. The forest has 1.8 lakh saplings of various species including mohur, jacaranda and mahogany. When the saplings begin to mature into trees, the forest may turnout to be a huge carbon sink cleansing the polluted city.