House that! Mega plans land in bigger delays

House that! Mega plans land in bigger delays

December 14th, 2009
By Our Correspondent
Tags: BDA, Master plan not implemented, mega projects delayed

Dec. 13: With demand for land and housing growing in the city, people have been looking forward to the sites they have bought from the Bengaluru Development Authority(BDA) to build the home of their dreams. But the BDA seems to be plagued with problems and delays have become the order of the day in
delivering sites to those who have been queueing up for them.
There was much anticipation when a plan was drawn up for formation of five mega layouts with 90,000 sites last year in the city after BDA’s master plan 2015 was approved by the state government. But once again the process of forming the Nadaprabhu Kempegowda, K. Shivarama Karanth, D. Devaraj Urs, Kyasambahalli Changalaraya Reddy and S. Nijalingappa layouts, is hobbling along as the authority struggles with acquiring land and providing adequate facilities for those looking forward to occupying them.
“The government has failed to come out with an adequate rehabilitation and resettlement policy for the people whose land is being acquired. This is proving a huge setback to its ambitious plans to form these layouts,” says environmental engineer Captain Rajarao, who finds it difficult to understand how the authorities can hope to provide water to new layouts when they are not able to satisfy the wants of the people in the existing layouts.
Even 18 months after the preliminary notification was issued for the formation of Kempegowda layout, no progress has been made in issuing the final notification and forming layouts, he points out.
The Kempegowda Layout is to be formed on 4,815 acres of land spread over 12 villages in Kengeri. The estimated cost of land acquisition is Rs 2,639 crore.
The preliminary notification was issued in March 2008 inviting objections from the public and the BDA received over 700 objections and suggestions from those who were likely to be affected by the takeover of the land. Although the BDA has since held a public hearing as well, it has not yet issued the final notification to form the layout. BDA officials, however, promise it will be issued in the next couple of months.
Move to Shivaram Karanth layout. Here the preliminary notification was issued in December 2008, but the BDA is still in the process of reviewing the around 12,500 objections it has received. As far as the other three layouts are concerned, there has been very little progress with even the preliminary notification not being be issued to hear objections, if any, to their formation.