Next: Indiranagar and Domlur

Next: Indiranagar and Domlur
After Koramangala, BMP To Wield Axe on Building Violations
By Smitha Rao/TNN

Bangalore: Have an office in Indiranagar? Watch out. If there is any violation in building bylaws, your office will come crashing down, a la Koramangala.

Taking cognisance of building violations and the resultant Karnataka High Court strictures at Koramangala, Bangalore’s civic authorities are taking preemptive action, for once. Target: Bangalore East. Indiranagar and HAL 2nd stage, including Domlur, which have innumerable number of IT firms operating out of residential layouts and bylanes, will face the cranes, JCBs, pneumatic hammers. These areas have over 12,000 properties.

Bangalore Mahanagara Palike (BMP) engineers contend that a comprehensive and thorough perusal that they have initiated will yield violations galore — mostly IT firms operating out of residential premises.

Indiranagar, in bygone years, was hailed as a haven for bureaucrats, government officials, people in power. But, it had to handle the spillover of burgeoning offices, small IT firms, advertising agencies in neighbourhood Koramangala. On a guestimate, the commercialisation in the area is 70 per cent.

BMP commissioner K Jothiramalingam has received complaints urging him to look into rampant commercialisation of the area. “There have been problems from Indiranagar 12th main; the BMP will conduct a survey of the areas. The first step when we spot violations is to withdraw licences. Later the course of issuing provisional orders and final orders will be followed’’ he says.

Explains a BMP engineer: “IT firms in peaceful residential areas contribute to parking problems, increase in vehicular density. We are looking stringently at offices that got building sanctions and plans for residential usage, which overnight metamorphosed into commercial structures. These will be tackled according to procedures.’’ The expansive Indiranagar has four wards. Typical violations include making a mockery of bylaws, set-back area violations, zoning rules, overnight conversion of a residential complex into a commercial one.

Action continues today: The demolition exercise at Koramangala will resume on Tuesday after a a day’s hiatus on Monday. For, on Monday, residents of Koramangala, under the aegis of Koramangala Residents Welfare Association, observed a peaceful bandh. There were no reported cases of violence or problems in the area. As a mark of protest, shopkeepers downed their shutters..

A release from the Koramangala Initiative has alleged that the BMP personnel have not presented any official demolition order.