The Hindu : Karnataka / Bangalore News : Part of corridor project work going on at brisk pace

Online edition of India's National Newspaper
Wednesday, Sep 20, 2006
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Karnataka

Karnataka - Bangalore

Part of corridor project work going on at brisk pace

Govind D. Belgaumkar

`If Government hands over land, entire stretch will be ready soon'

BANGALORE: The completed nine-kilometre stretch of the Bangalore Mysore Infrastructure Corridor matches the standards of high-speed expressways anywhere in the world. However, non-stop high-speed connectivity along the entire 41-km Peripheral Road is still far away.

Land acquisition problems have adversely hit the four-lane Peripheral Road. The Government is yet to transfer more than 10 blocks of land to Nandi Infrastructure Corridor Enterprises Ltd. (NICE), which is building the Peripheral Road as part of the larger Bangalore-Mysore Infrastructure Corridor.

While the company spokesperson alleged that the Government was sitting on the files, Principal Secretary to the Government, Public Works Department, P.B. Mahishi, said efforts were on to fulfil the Government's obligations and commitments made to the Supreme Court.

The company spokesperson said it would open the entire stretch for traffic in less than three months if the Government handed over the land to it immediately. "But a series of small problems are creating big problems," he added. Due to non-availability of land, work could not be taken up on patches near Gottigere Lake, Kanakapura Road, Kengeri, Magadi Road and Tumkur Road among others, the spokesperson said.

Mr. Mahishi said a few patches of lands were with the Forest Department and a few others with the Lake Development Authority. He would write to the authorities concerned to expedite the matter. In certain other cases, the BMIC had identified land only recently and they were being acquired. The Government would need time to complete the procedures involved. As a rule, the Forests Department would have to be compensated with twice the area of land acquired from it. NICE was yet to comply with this requirement, Mr. Mahishi said.

But the company spokesperson said this had been complied with six months ago. He said he had the documents to prove this.

The Peripheral Road forms a major part of the Phase 1 of the bigger Bangalore-Mysore Infrastructure Corridor (BMIC). A part of it, from Mysore Road to Kanakapura Road (9 km), was inaugurated recently.

The first phase of BMIC has three components — the Peripheral Road, the 9.1-km link road to connect the city centre to the Peripheral Road and a 12-km stretch of the 111 km Expressway up to Mysore.

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