Fight on for HSR Layout playground

Fight on for HSR Layout playground
TIMES NEWS NETWORK

Bangalore: Residents of HSR Layout have been waging a threeyear battle to ensure an 8-acre plot near the Cambridge School remains a playground. Children, including school and college students, have been using the site for sports for over ten years. Protests have been on ever since it was allotted for development of a judges’ colony.
To voice their opposition, residents held a rally from Cambridge School to the BDA Complex in the area on Saturday. They say the plot — Site No. 63, Haralakunte village — was earmarked for a sports complex in the BDA’s Masterplan 2015. They feel let down by the government’s move — in October 2007 — to hand over a vital lung space in their locality for the colony.
Residents, who want the sports complex and a mini forest on the site, are seeking a stop to construction work. When they presented a memorandum — signed by citizens in all seven sectors — to MLA Satish Reddy, they were told the decision would be reversed. Brig. Murthy, president, Sector 2 Residents Welfare Association, said citizens have voiced their concerns to chief secretaries and the BDA commissioner over the past couple of years, but to no avail. During President’s rule, the governor’s office directed BDA to intervene.
Following this, residents were asked to identify alternative land for the complex as the allotment couldn’t be reversed. However, the layout doesn’t have any other plot that can be developed as a playground, said Murthy. No action has been taken to identify alternative land either, he added.

The playground has turned into a construction site