BTC may get longer run at race course

BTC may get longer run at race course

July 29th, 2009
By Our Correspondent

Bengaluru, July 28: With barely five months to go before the lease on the Bangalore Turf Club expires, is the B.S. Yeddyurappa government reassessing its stance that the BTC must vacate the premises — one of the few lung spaces in the heart of the city — before the December 31 deadline?
Insiders indicated that 85 acres of land Chikkajala is to be handed over to the BTC in a couple of days and that there is a possibility that BTC will be allowed to stay on at its current tony address during the three years it will take to build a new racecourse.
However when asked for a comment, Chief Minister Yeddyurappa, who had told Deccan Chronicle that he would like to build the country’s tallest tower where the race course stands, said: “If there is anything like that, I will have to tell the Assembly first, not the media.”
BTC sources reiterated that if all else fails, they will move the courts, even as the turf club relocation claimed its first casualty with 202 of 248 members of the BTC voting to remove chairman P.V. Shetty from office in an emergency annual general meeting (AGM) Monday evening over not handling the relocation satisfactorily.
As members do not have the right to remove a chairman, a second AGM has been called on Wednesday where the executive committee could pick Harinder Shetty or Harimohan Naidu as chairman.
Back in the 80s, the BTC members had voted out then chairman Venugopal Naidu and replaced him with P.G. Belliappa.