Land required for Bangalore-Mysore expressway project

Land required for Bangalore-Mysore expressway project

The Hindu

THE toll expressway proposed between Bangalore and Mysore may have got the Supreme Court's affirmation on Monday; but it still needs some 5,000 acres of land to be released by the State Government to take the project ahead, according to a spokesman for the promoter company.

The Kalyani group-led SPV, Nandi Infrastructure Corridor Enterprises Ltd (NICE), is implementing the Rs 2,250-crore project.

Work is currently under way on the 62-km peripheral and link roads on the outskirts of Bangalore. NICE holds only 1,035 acres of phase 1 land and needs the remaining areas to continue the work, the spokesman told Business Line.

NICE, he said, was trying to keep the August deadline to open parts of the readied road to traffic.

On Monday, the apex court rule that work on the project may go on, but no land earmarked for it could be `alienated' (sold or diverted); the company said there was no such intent.

The Bangalore-Mysore Infrastructure Corridor Project totally includes a 111-km four-lane toll road and five townships along the way.

The project spread over three phases requires over 20,000 acres of land, much of it for the townships.

BMICP, conceived in 1994 along with some of Bangalore's large infrastructure projects such as the international airport and the now aborted light rail system, is slated to be ready in August 2007, seven years behind the originally planned date.