1,500 families to be derailed for Metro

BACKGROUNDER
1,500 families to be derailed for Metro
The Times of India

Bangalore: For the famed Metro Rail to chug along Byappanahalli to Mysore Road via MG Road, some 1,500 families will have to make way.

The Bangalore Metro Rail Corporation (BMRC) has come up with a comprehensive list of number of families that would be affected by the project. And have also firmed up the immediate obvious corollary — a rehabilitation package that includes cost of land and properties. The logistics of rehabilitation also includes finding an alternative space for the families to move out, negotiating on the market rate for properties, relocation of two slums.

Explains V Madhu, managing director, BMRC, “Roughly about 1,500 families will be affected in some form or the other. Either they lose land, or may have to reset their houses elsewhere or restart their businesses. We have worked out a compensation package. In the first phase, Rs 600 crore would be required for cost of land and properties.”

A host of things on the Metro Rail is slated to get the ultimate nod from chief minister H D Kumaraswamy on August 8. The meeting with CM and BMRC is supposed to clear the air on the rehabilitation package amount and problems with the routes in phase I.

In the course of the metro track, two slums — Jaibhimanagar and Basaweshwara slum — would be razed down entirely. The attendant 230 dwellers — 110 from Jaibhimanagar and 120 from Basaweshwara — would apparently be given land elsewhere. The onus of providing land to those who are displaced, is on BMRC. “We will be pushing for market rates for properties, the board has approved the sites for relocation,” said Madhu, while not divulging where the displaced would be accommodated.

The land officer at BMRC, along with his team have prepared a report of the demographics of the people who will be displaced. West Bangalore, apparently has lower middle class dwellers and east Bangalore has a huge chunk of middle-class populace whose properties or dwellings come in the way of the mega project.

For a back-grounder the Rs 6,395 crore Metro Rail would have 33 stations in two alignments and BMRC is in the process of acquiring 621 tracts of property for laying tracks and constructing stations. The most contentious debate has been on the acquisition of 150 properties from Mahakavi Kuvempu Road (from Devaiah Park to Rajajinagar) and 55 from CMH Road in Indiranagar.