VANDALISM: The damaged stretch of BMIC road. — Photo: K. Murali Kumar

Bangalore: There were no policemen on Sunday on the stretch of road between Hemmigepura and Konasandra that was dug by angry villagers in protest.

The spot is in the Thalghatpura Police Station limits in Bangalore Rural district. The road is part of the Bangalore-Mysore Infrastructure Corridor (BMIC) to be inaugurated on June 16.

Farmers from nearby villages who dug the road on Saturday claimed that the agency working on the project, Nandi Infrastructure Corridor Enterprise (NICE), had not kept its promise of repairing the road connecting Kengeri, Hemmigepura and other villages. They also claimed that the road was damaged by the movement of overloaded trucks ferrying construction material to the project site during the construction of the BMIC road. "The road connecting the villages has been damaged. NICE promised to repair the road after the construction of this road was completed. Nothing has been done so far," a villager, on condition of anonymity, said.

He also said that only part of the road (the stretch near the underpass of the BMIC road) has been repaired. "What about the remaining part of the road? It is in a bad state and it takes us nearly 45 minutes to cover a distance of 5 km," he said.

When contacted, a spokesperson of NICE said that it was true that the stretch that was near the project site was in a bad state. "We had promised the villagers that we would not inaugurate the BMIC road unless the repair work on the other road is completed," he said.

The spokesperson also said that the villagers are asking them to repair the existing Public Works Department road.

"We have no legal right to repair that road. How is it that the issue has come up soon after we announced the inauguration date? We suspect a political hand behind the whole issue," he said. He also said that the agency had filed a complaint and hoped the police would protect the road and its property.

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