Mega City project put on hold

Mega City project put on hold
Vijay Times

THE formation of a mega layout comprising 50,000 sites by the Bangalore Development Authority (BDA) will be put on hold unless the revised Comprehensive Development Plan (CDP) gets approved by the government, BDA commissioner M K Shankarlinge Gowda said on Friday.

Addressing a press conference, he said that once the revised CDP was approved, the BDA would go ahead with the processes of identifying land and acquiring it for the purpose of forming the proposed new layout.

"The CDP or the Master Plan 2015 has certain zonal regulations which have to be considered during the process of land acquisition," he said. "The government has sought some clarifications from the BDA," the commissioner said.

"Land for the new layout will be acquired at three different places. It is not easy to form and maintain 50,000 sites in a single plot of land," he added.

The CDP would be approved by the end of August or the first week of September. One week after the CDPs approval, the places would be announced, Gowda said.

It may be recalled that the ambitious project of forming a mega layout was announced when the Congress government headed by N Dharam Singh was in power.

DETAILS ON WEBSITE

The cut-off details of the second phase of Arkavathi site allotment has been updated in the BDAs official website www.bdabangalore.org.

A total of 685 applicants had applied for having their applications reviewed and around 220 applicants were considered for allotment of sites following the review, the commissioner said.

"During the review process, we found that some applicants had provided wrong domicile proof and had two wives," he said in a lighter vein.

BETTERMENT CHARGES

The BDA would collect betterment charges from those land owners whose lands came under the expanse of the Arkavathi Layout. The money would be utilised for providing civic amenities to the residents of the layout, he said.

HIGH TECH CITY

Replying to a query on the fate of the Hitech City project, he said that the BDA was not authorised to acquire land for the purpose of commercial purposes.

“We will request the Court to dispose off the Hi-tech City litigation on the lines of the Arkavathi Layout litigation,” the commissioner said.

Gowda said that they had urged the government to make amendments to Section 38 (D) of the BDA Act, enabling it to acquire lands for commercial purposes too. However, it had been rejected by the Council once. Again, it had been sent to the government for amendment, he added.


Theres bad news for 5,000 allottees, who had been shortlisted for allotment of sites at the Arkavathi Layout. Of the 20,000 shortlisted applicants, the BDA will distribute sites to only 15,000 of them.

Addressing a press meet, BDA commissioner M K Shankarlinge Gowda said, "We can allot only 15,000 sites and the remaining 5,000 allottees will be considered in the next layout formation on priority basis." "In all, we will be making allotments of nearly 10,000 sites including the second phase.We will allot another 5,000 sites in July after clearing the land under dispute,” Gowda added.

Under the first phase in January this year, the BDA had made allotments of 1,810 sites at the Arkavathi layout. Under the second phase,it has proposed to distribute 7,700 sites.