Arkavathy dreams dashed

Sankranthi gift still a case of distant site

Sources said that over 700 acre of the total 2,750 acre of the notified area for the layout formation is presently under litigations.

New Indian Express

The Bangalore Development Authority (BDA) is now in a dilemma as to whether to go ahead with site allotment under the vexed Arkavathy Layout project (which is caught in litigations) or to wait till all the cases are cleared in the court.

According to BDA sources, the BDA’s counsel has advised it not to initiate site allotment process till all litigations filed by local land owners are cleared in the High Court.

In other words, the BDA has to get all cases on various issues pertaining to land acquisition cleared, before allotting sites.

There are over 450 to 500 cases against BDA on the layout project.

“It needs a lot of time to get all the cases cleared. It may take from one week to a month to make the area litigation-free. Till then, the BDA has to hold back the site allotment process,” highly-placed sources in BDA said.

It may be noted that BDA had decided to postpone the date of site allotment from January 15, as per the counsel’s advise. In fact, Chief Minister N Dharam Singh had apologised for not keeping his promise of allotting sites as ‘Sankranthi gift.’

Besides, the BDA has to demolish hundreds of ‘unauthorised’ constructions -- of nearly 500 acre -- that have come up after preliminary notification was issued in February, 2003. “But BDA has not taken any decision on the issue so far,” sources said.

Phased manner

If BDA decides to go ahead with the allotment process despite legal hurdles, it may have to take up the allotment of 20,000 sites in a phased manner, breaking its practice of allotting sites at one-go, official sources told Deccan Herald.

Moreover, the BDA has so far formed just over 11,000 sites against 20,000 to be allotted among applicants. “Even if the BDA manages to clear all cases at the earliest, it would need at least two weeks’ time to complete the work on remaining 9,000 sites,” sources said.

Work hampered

The ongoing work on the layout formation has been hampered following a stay issued by the High Court on the cutting of trees and demolition of buildings.

“As nearly 40 per cent of the notified area is covered by trees, the work has been severely hit,” the BDA sources said. The existing stay is on cutting all species of trees, including coconut and eucalyptus trees, which do not come under the Trees’ Protection Act.

BDA Commissioner M N Vidyashankar, however, said that all sites will be alloted at a time. “We will initiate allotment process soon after getting a green signal from the legal counsel,” he added. But he refused to say when the counsel would give the green signal.

HURDLES

Over 450 cases.
Over 700 acre of land under litigation.
Stay on tree cutting and demolition.
Over 3,000 unauthorised constructions.