Namma Bengaluru Foundation calls for implement zoning regulations

BENGALURU: Namma Bengaluru Foundation (NBF), an initiative for citizens’ welfare in the city, which had taken up an exercise to map commercialisation of residential areas, has called for proper implementation of zoning regulations in the city.

Foundation CEO Sridhar Pabbisetty said on Friday that for the last several months, NBF, along with members of 17 Residents’ Welfare Associations (RWAs) had been working on this. “The idea is that we wanted to urge BBMP to go about planning the city in a systematic and a legally responsible fashion. It’s a city wide effort by a lot of people. The RWAs have been putting in a lot of effort by collating information at the neighbourhood level and validating it with the BBMP officials,” he said.

Pabbisetty said BBMP’s biggest blunder was to allow commercial establishments to operate without trade licenses. “The easiest thing they can do is to stop it. The law is clearly laid out, they just have to enforce it.” He said that all the information collected had been given to the BBMP Commissioner in July 2016, and it is now up to him to take action.

Posts on the Foundation’s Facebook and Twitter pages reveal that residents were being threatened by violators in several areas of the city. Taking note of their grievances, the BBMP commissioner had issued public and individual notices in December 2016 demanding closure of commercial establishments in residential areas. NBF has also called for citizens to share relevant information with them.