The budget for Bengaluru, announced by CM Siddaramaiah, says the annual state grant of Rs 3,000 crore being provided to Bruhat Bengaluru Mahanagara Palike (BBMP) will be enhanced to Rs 7,000 crore. A new Special Purpose Vehicle will be established to utilize these grants.
But who will plan the projects under this grant? It should not be proposed under Greater Bengaluru Authority (GBA), in the Greater Bengaluru Governance Bill (GBGB), under State government control but rather the constitutionally mandated Metropolitan Planning Committee (MPC) under the 74th Amendment.
All the Brand Bengaluru projects incentivizing private vehicles by building tunnel roads, expressways, double-decker Metro and road flyover projects, etc., are in place, which are estimated to cost Rs 1 lakh crore. However, these projects are being taken up without following due process of law and experts’ advice; they are not part of the RMP 2015 or Comprehensive Mobility Plan and also have no approval from the Metropolitan Planning Committee and the Bengaluru Metropolitan Land Transport Authority.
One does not find the same amounts being provided for incentivising public transport, which is the real solution for decongesting traffic. BMTC will be provided with 9,000 e-buses, bringing its total number of buses to about 15,500, but this figure is still short of the 18,000 buses which experts have said are needed to incentivize public transport. Also, there is nothing about creating Bus Rapid Transport System (BRTS) lanes on arterial roads and providing last-mile connectivity with smaller e-buses.
Under the Bengaluru Suburban Railway Project, works for only two corridors of four corridors are in progress. Can works on the other two corridors be expedited? The above bus and rail projects are the low-hanging fruits that should be grasped before taking up dubious projects incentivizing private cars.
Flood management gets Rs 2,000 crore:
Almost every shower brings Bengaluru to its knees, with floodwaters entering houses and apartments and inundating roads. In a cloudburst incident last October, northern parts of the city witnessed heavy flooding.
Realising the need for a special package to mitigate urban flooding, Chief Minister Siddaramaiah announced in the budget a grant of Rs 2,000 crore towards establishing a robust flood management system in the city.
The CM also granted financial assistance of Rs 3,000 crore to the BBMP and BWSSB for the construction of a systematic drainage network and sewage treatment plants (STPs) to control climate change-induced flooding in the state capital. A wastewater treatment plant and sewage pumping system will be constructed at a cost of Rs 1,070 crore.