BENGALURU: With land acquisition for the Rs 27,000-crore Bengaluru Business Corridor (previously known as Peripheral Ring Road) project proving to be never ending and highly contentious, the tender to be called to build the much-delayed project has been delayed.
To speed it up, the state government on Friday issued a government order, constituting a special committee to tackle the issue and find a solution.
The committee will have the additional chief secretary of the Urban Development Department as chairman with the BDA commissioner and principal secretaries of the law, finance and revenue (disaster management) departments among its members.
The 73.03-km circular project, coming up on 2,560 acres of land, was proposed 20 years ago to decongest Bengaluru. It will connect Tumakuru Road to Hosur Road by crossing Doddaballapur Road, Ballari Road and Old Madras Road. However, land losers, mostly farmers, demand a much higher compensation (market value) than the package proposed by BDA, bringing the acquisition process to a standstill.
The new committee will oversee an internal committee within the BDA which is entrusted only with the task of implementing the BBC. It is headed by the deputy commissioner of land acquisition in BDA and has an executive engineer, special land acquisition officer, tahsildar and district registrar in the team.
Deputy Chief Minister DK Shivakumar, who is also Bengaluru in-charge minister, recently met top BDA officials on the issue and asked officers of the land acquisition department to renegotiate with the farmers.
A top BDA official said, “The huge compensation demanded by farmers is just not possible as the cost of the project, which has already escalated very high, will go up further. As per our present calculation, the land acquisition will take the lion’s share of the project and is roughly expected to cost Rs 21,000 crore.”
The public sector Housing and Urban Development Corporation has agreed to be the primary funder for the project. A source said, “Multiple people within a family staking claim to a piece of land is another serious issue BDA is grappling with on the compensation settlement.”
