The Hindu : Karnataka News : Rs. 3,500-cr. water project for Bangalore soon

Online edition of India's National Newspaper
Saturday, Jun 12, 2004

Karnataka

Karnataka

Rs. 3,500-cr. water project for Bangalore soon

By Our Special Correspondent

BANGALORE, JUNE 11. The Governor, T.N. Chaturvedi, in his address to the joint session of the legislature on Friday, said that a Rs. 3,500-crore project to augment water supply to Bangalore city would be taken up with assistance from the Japan Bank for International Cooperation and the Housing and Urban Development Corporation (HUDCO). It would be phase two of the Cauvery Water Supply Scheme Stage IV.

The Government planned to provide Cauvery water to eight municipality areas around Bangalore at a cost of Rs. 500 crore. The Cauvery scheme for Bangalore would ensure an additional 500 million litres of water a day, with a sewage disposal component.

The Government would launch a project for the electronic storage of maps of all rural lands. The Government would endeavour to make use of technological advances. In particular, it would carry forward the Bhoomi project and all village maps would be digitised. This would help in creating a database for planning and administration.

The Governor said computerisation of registration had now made it possible to supply encumbrance certificates from the registration database.

The Bangalore Development Authority planned to develop a peripheral 120-km road around the city and would be distributing 20,000 sites this year. It would commission the flyovers on Airport Road and at Bangalore Dairy Circle and Jayadeva Hospital Circle shortly.

The Bangalore Mahanagara Palike had invested about Rs. 365 crore to meet the infrastructure needs of the growing population.

On the healthcare sector, the Governor said extending telemedicine facility to 1,000 primary health centres in the State with private participation would be the next stage of expansion.

Telemedicine facilities would be established in remote districts and it had already been implemented in Chamarajanagar and Bidar districts.

Ten more districts would be brought under the telemedicine facility this year.

In the field of medical education, the Government would continue the super-speciality postgraduate courses in urology and plastic surgery at Bangalore Medical College. Postgraduate courses in physiotherapy had been started. Linking Bangalore Medical College with the national library would now be taken up.

Referring to the biotechnology sector, the Governor said the industry had taken off in the State making it the best biotechnology hub in the country.

The Government would focus on providing state-of-the-art infrastructure for the biotechnology industry and a biotechnology park would be established at Electronics City. The park would provide incubation facilities to start-up companies as well as house the prestigious Institute of Bioinformatics and Applied Biotechnology (IBAB) and the Centre for Genomics.

The State Government had been evaluating the performance of the public sector industries to stay in tune with the public sector reforms policy.

Of the 39 government undertakings identified for privatisation or closure, closure orders had been issued for 15 while five others were privatised. The State Government had been providing assistance to the financially weak undertakings to help them implement the voluntary retirement scheme.

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