City task force in abiding slumber?

City task force in abiding slumber?

The chief minister’s baby, ABIDE, has apparently dozed off — there have been no meetings of the developmental task force for the last three weeks

Atul Chaturvedi
Posted On Tuesday, November 18, 2008

Chief Minister B S Yeddyurappa’s initiative to revive and rebuild Bangalore seems to have lost its way. Agenda for Bengaluru Infrastructure and Development - Task Force (ABIDE-TF) is supposed to meet every Friday. These meetings have to be chaired by its vice-chairman Ananth Kumar or its convener Rajeev Chandrasekhar. But with both these members of Parliament occupied with political or other matters, there have been no meetings for the last three weeks — a reflection of how serious this heavyweight-laden task force is about Bangalore’e development.

ABIDE got off to a promising start with its first meeting on June 28 being chaired by the chief minister. Seven weekly meetings under the chairmanship of Ananth Kumar followed, after which the task force seems to have gone to sleep.

‘Missing’ CM
According to the ABIDE guidelines, a ‘full’ meeting of the task force chaired by the chief minister has to be held on the first Friday of every month, between 6 pm and 9 pm. But Yeddyurappa has himself been remiss here — he has chaired only three meetings so far, in June, August and September.

Sources in the chief minister’s office told Bangalore Mirror, “One meeting should be held every Friday from 10 am to 12 noon, presided over by the vice- chairman. There may be more than one meeting a week, if found necessary. These meetings could also be in the form of a field trip to a designated agency or an area of the city. Non-official members are take note and keep themselves free for the meetings. Official members are informed a week in advance.”

Plan makers
The main objective of ABIDE is to formulate a comprehensive integrated development plan, ward-wise, for the entire city (Plan Bangalore 2020) with immediate (2008-2009), medium (2008-2012) and long-term (2008-2020) targets. ABIDE members are also required to review various existing plans as well as the progress of various projects taken up by agencies like BBMP, BDA and BWSSB.

The sources said ABIDE members had met four times in September and thrice in October. As Ananth Kumar was busy campaigning in Bhopal, a message has gone out for members to meet this Wednesday.

According to Rajeev Chandrasekhar’s office, there have been nine meetings of ABIDE and 23 meetings of the working group in the first 100 days since the initiative was launched.

All the members
Members of ABIDE are transport minister R Ashok, excise minister Katta Subramanya Naidu, former chief secretary A Ravindra, Narayana Hrudayalaya’s Dr Devi Shetty, Biocon’s Kiran Mazumdar-Shaw, Janaagraha’s Ramesh Ramanathan, Prof Srihari, AVAS director Anita Reddy, Bosch’s joint managing director Lakshminarayan, principal secretary (urban development) K Jothirmalingam, principal secretary (housing department) Sobha Nambisan, BBMP commissioner S Subramanya, BDA commissioner Siddaiah, Bescom managing director Tushar Girinath, BMRDA metropolitan commissioner Abijith Das Gupta, city police commissioner Shankar Bidari, BWSSB chairman Rammurthy, BMRCL managing director N Sivasailam and BMTC managing director Syed Zameer Pasha.