Bangalore-Mysore corridor hits dead end

Bangalore-Mysore corridor hits dead end
The Indian Express

BMIC: Karnataka govt yet to hand over land at 10 places for exit/entry points for corridor traffic

Bangalore, May 8: A little foretaste of what the BMIC (Bangalore-Mysore Infrastructure Corridor) project has to offer as India’s first privately implemented expressway and township project, is available along the completed portions of Phase I.

Modelled on the Autobahn (in Germany), the 41-km peripheral road around Bangalore—the entire length has been divided into short stretches, 6 km are complete—and a 9-km link road from Bangalore (partially complete) promises top-speed travel on a virtual feathertrack while integrating two key new-economy Indian cities.

But, if one were to travel in the vicinity of the Bangalore-end of the Expressway, finding the peripheral feeder road or link to the Expressway would be almost impossible. With the Karnataka government yet to hand over land to build the interchanges at nearly 10 places to allow vehicles to get on and off the peripheral road, the first phase of the BMIC project is invisible in the short-term and useless in the long-term.

The land for the interchanges as sought by NICE is now the bone of contention between the company and the state government, despite the Supreme Court recently upholding a high court verdict to carry out the BMIC project on 20,193 acres of land—as agreed in the original 1997 Frame Work Agreement.

‘‘In all, 4,467 acres of land has been acquired for the peripheral road in the first phase. Around 2,450 acres is excess. Every interchange requires only around 75 acres and larger ones around 120 acres — as per the Project Technical Report that was prepared in 1995 and preceded the 1997 Framework Agreement. The company has been allowed to acquire 300 to 400 acres for the interchanges,’’ says a senior government official.

Despite the recent Supreme Court rap for stalling the project with ill-conceived stances, the H D Kumaraswamy government is not set to back down and allow the project to proceed. When the case was in the Supreme Court, the state had withheld handing over of the entire land sought by NICE for the first phase saying that the case was pending. The government is now trying to find a new course of action — legal or otherwise — to prevent what it maintains is handing over of ‘‘excess land’’ to NICE.

Projected for completion in 20 months, when commenced in February 2004, the first phase of the Rs 2,250-crore project is already eight months and Rs 600 crore behind schedule. Despite 80 per cent work being complete in the first phase there still seems to be a long, tough road ahead.

While questions had earlier been raised on land being allotted for five townships along the expressway’s path, the state government now says there is a dispute only over the land for the peripheral road.

NICE has made repeated requests for land to complete phase 1 and to move ahead. Armed with the April 20 writ of mandamus from the apex court, allowing the project to go ahead as conceived in the 1997 Framework Agreement, the company is now contemplating contempt proceedings against the government.

‘‘If the government is going to stall the project again, like it seems to be, we would have to take recourse to contempt proceedings,’’ a BMIC spokesperson commented on behalf of NICE managing director Ashok Kheny.

CM Kumaraswamy has expressed full support for the project, but there seems to be a rider to his support — his father Deve Gowda willing. Deve Gowda has been fighting the BMIC project on the ground that the promoters along with some politicians and bureaucrats are set to cash in on the real estate boom by selling land acquired for BMIC at Rs 10 lakh per acre at rates up to Rs 1 crore.

‘‘My concern is only about allotting huge tracts of land in excess of project requirement,’’ Gowda had said after the SC ruling.