Brooms were out in Bidadi when Karnataka government officials reached villages on the suburbs of Bengaluru to carry out a land survey. Women farmers, at the forefront of a 485-day protest against the Bidadi Township Project, forced officials to abort their mission as the protest turned violent. The villagers’ grouse is that they are opposed to selling their land. The ₹18,133-crore township is planned on a little over 7,481 acres across nine villages in Bengaluru South district. It is designed to take the pressure off core Bengaluru. The state Cabinet set the ball rolling for land acquisition at the end of April. Now the project is steaming ahead with a `₹26-crore tender to appoint a consultant to draw up a masterplan.
This has set off a political war, with the opposition BJP-JDS claiming it is Chief Minister D K Shivakumar’s pet project that will displace thousands of farmers. Around 6,500 acres of the notified area is fertile farmland with over 10 lakh coconut and mango trees—it supports over 3,500 families who are also into dairying. The government has offered ₹2-2.5 crore per acre, or the farmers can opt for 9,693 sq ft of residential plot per acre. Most farmers want none of it, while some are demanding ₹5-6 crore per acre.
JDS leader and Union minister H D Kumaraswamy has urged Shivakumar to halt the land acquisition and hold talks. Yet, it was Kumaraswamy who had announced the project as CM back in 2006; Shivakumar’s contention is that he is only giving shape to Kumaraswamy’s dream.
There is more to the Bidadi battle than the farmers’ loss. Both the Gowda family and the D K brothers have skin in the game as the project falls in a keenly-contested constituency. D K Suresh was Ramanagara MP before he lost to BJP’s Manjunath, son-in-law of former Prime Minister H D Deve Gowda. It has also been held by Kumaraswamy, his wife Anitha and was contested by son Nikhil. Shivakumar, who now sees it as his stomping ground, may have to do a reality check. If the protest escalates, the government could be forced to drop the project, just as it did when Devanahalli farmers had stood firm against the acquisition of 1,777 acres near the international airport for a defence and aerospace park.