BBMPs road plan may hit

BBMPs road plan may hit
Bangalore, Shruthi Balakrishna, dhns:
The BBMPs plans for a widened Palace Road might ease traffic congestion on the busy pathway.

But the Central College and other educational institutions on the road will have to pay a big price as they are going to lose 3,791 sq uare metres of land.

From the information available with Deccan Herald, it is clear the planned alignment of the Palace Road will slice 1,011 sq mts off the Central College campus, which includes the Jnanajyothi Auditorium. The University Law College will losing lose 565 sq mts and the AICTE and UGC SW Office together will lose 948 sq mts.

With the new alignment even the Seshadri Road and Nrupathunga Road, the UVCE Mechanical Engineering department will also lose an area of 870 sq mts. Moreover, the widened road will also take away another 397 sq mts from the main campus of the UVCE.

BBMP has proposed to acquire 2,524 sq mts along the Palace Road and another 1,267 sq mts along the Seshadri and Nrupathunga Roads.

Request for land

Earlier, the BBMP Commissioner had requested the Bangalore University to hand over a total of 3,053 sq mts of its city campus land to widen the Palace Road.

The original proposal sought 465 sq mts from the Law College, 1,740 sq mts from the Central College and 848 sq mts from AICTE and UGC SW Office. But the varsity expressed its inability to transfer the land. Its contention is:“Giving away the land would affect the calm environs of the campus, its heritage building and also the functioning of the auditorium.”

BBMP then realigned the road-widening project after deliberating the suggestions made by the varsity.However,the university officials are not thrilled by the new alignment too.

No benefit

“We won’t benefit anything from the present alignment. In fact, we will lose even the pavement area in front of the Jnana Jyothi auditorium. The auditorium is a prime place to conduct various universities activities. If they remove the pavement area, then we will face parking problem,” a varsity official said.

Further, the official noted that even if the varsity land is handed over to the BBMP, the classes in the campus will be disrupted when the road widening work is taken up.

“BBMP officials can consider acquiring more land in front of the Cauvery guest house instead of acquiring the varsity land,” the official suggested.

A recent syndicate meeting has now resolved to appoint two of its members to discuss the issue with the BBMP commissioner and “request him to modify the plan in such a way that the utility of the building is maintained.”