Statement by planners backs NICE: Ex-MLA

Statement by planners backs NICE: Ex-MLA
New Indian Express

BANGALORE: Former Rajajinagar MLA S Suresh Kumar alleges town planners’ objection to BDA’s peripheral road is selective.

“It is almost a defence statement on behalf of Nandi Infrastructure Corridor Enterprise (NICE),” he said.

He said the peripheral road having a width of 220 feet and a total estimated cost of Rs 80 crore was envisaged in the Comprehensive Development Plan (CDP) in 1995 which is valid even today.

NICE has come up with a proposal to develop only the southern portion of the peripheral road and has entered into an agreement with the Government.

“It is also given to understand that the BDA, the so called planning authority of Bangalore, has not given any clearance, permission or approval for the formation of the peripheral road falling in its CDP limits,” he said.

He pointed out that the southern portion of the peripheral road being developed by NICE is a toll road, which will be linked to the Bangalore-Mysore Expressway and is to be maintained by the company itself.

The northern portion of the peripheral road was not developed by the BDA or by any other private agency. So the BDA has come out with a proposal in the draft plan to form a new peripheral road all round the city to ease traffic congestion.

“The question that has to be answered by these town planners is that when BDA forms the northern portion of the peripheral road as a toll free road, how can the public pay toll to use the southern portion of the same road. The BDA is absolutely right in providing all-round peripheral road,” he said.

He said the town planners never raised their voice when the CDP was revised and reinvented in the name of Bangalore Mysore Infrastructure Corridor Project Authority (BMICPA).

“All this could have been solved if NICE had obtained necessary permission from BDA, instead of becoming a parallel authority in Bangalore,” he says.

“Unfortunately these town planners have become more loyal to a private profit-minded company than to the institution that must have nurtured them in their years of active service,” he adds.