Mammoth task ahead for this headless CMC

Mammoth task ahead for this headless CMC
The Times of India

Bangalore: A ribbon-sized road in K R Puram, Pai Layout, has the distinction of having elicited visits from a plethora of politicos — former prime minister H D Deve Gowda, former chief minister Dharam Singh, senior BJP leader Ananth Kumar, former Bangalore incharge minister Ramalinga Reddy, et al.

All of them, publicly, said: “whatever is needed to revamp the area will be done.’’ In action: zilch.
Spread over 44 sq-km with a population of 1.87 lakh people, K R Puram has a plethora of civic woes. The CMC has been ‘headless’ for months now and an assistant executive engineer has been calling the shots. Three agencies are in charge of basic infrastructure here — the revenue department, BDA and the BMP.

Just after the deluge of October 2005, the flood damage was estimated at Rs 25 crore and the same amount was slated to be released by the state government. CMC officials claim that nothing has reached them so far.
Roads in Pai Layout, which was the worst affected in the deluge, were asphalted early this year. Except, the black patches and potholes that have surfaced don’t bear testimony to this. Ditto is the situation with most roads in the entire area. But what gets to long-time residents is the CMC giving building plan sanctions to land sharks who have erected complexes atop rajakaaluves.

How can a 10-foot-wide road support seven apartment complexes? It’s a puzzle residents worry about whenever it rains. On the other hand, CMC officials themselves acknowledge that the roads are so narrow that it is impossible to even transport heavy equipment like bulldozers into the layouts.

Mrutyunjay, superintending engineer at the BMP, storm water projects, explains the range of challenges facing a revamp. “When we started our survey in the area, we found all the layouts in the area are in low-lying areas. All the water bodies have been encroached upon. Naturally there is no place for the water to flow out. The BMP will take up work to the tune of Rs 20 crore, we will be directing all the drains to the last ridge. The existing drains are not adequate so we will be re-constructing the entire drain network. Even an inter-connection between tanks is non-existent. So we have quite a huge task ahead, almost all the rajakaaluves are encroached upon.’’
On an optimistic note, the BMP thinks it can complete the work in four months time. Really!

For the record, the tenders for various developmental works were finalised only on Thursday. The works will be divided into nine packages totally, including roads, drains and revamping the network of water flow.
The action that has been galvanised so far: the CMC in tandem with the BDA has evicted some encroachers in areas where the flow of water even on regular days was getting blocked. And contrary to what officials thought, the eviction turned out to be an easy process, considering that they had been unsuccessful for years till now.