BENGALURU: An interactive meet held by BBMP officials over Zoom, with the residents of Mahadevapura and KR Puram Assembly constituencies on Tuesday evening, stirred a controversy, as the latter did not get a chance to air their grievances. Mincing no words, the resident welfare associations from KR Puram billed the meet “a hogwash” and saw it as an insult.
Around 150 people took part in the meet, which also had BBMP Chief Commissioner Gaurav Gupta, Mahadevapura MLA Aravind Limbavalli, Joint Commissioner R Venkatachalapathy and Chief Engineer Parameshwariah in attendance.
KR Puram MLA Byrathi Basavaraj was not present and claimed to TNIE that he was not invited and had no idea about such a meeting. Trinity Enclave Residents Association president Kochu Shankar pointed out that KR Puram struggled with basic issues like lack of roads, water or drains, and yet they were not given a hearing, while Mahadevapura residents spoke of improvements over the basics they had.
“It was Diwali eve and at least 70 representatives from KR Puram’s RWAs had let go of time to be spent with family to take part in this meet. It was very disappointing,” he said. Varkey Thomas, president of Prakruthi Layout Residents Association, billed the meet “a hogwash”. Meanwhile, Gupta said a separate meet would be held to address problems pertaining only to KR Puram either on Friday or Saturday.