Southern States - Karnataka-Bangalore   

Authority planned for Bangalore's development

By Our Special Correspondent

GULBARGA May 25. The State Government is considering establishing a Bangalore Metropolitan Authority (BMA) for the orderly development of Bangalore City on the lines of similar authorities in metros such as Mumbai, Delhi, Calcutta, and Chennai.

Disclosing this to presspersons here on Sunday, the Public Works Minister, Dharam Singh, said the proposed authority would also bring about better coordination among the Bangalore Mahanagara Palike, the Bangalore Development Authority, and the Karnataka Drinking Water Supply and Drainage Board, and other departments connected with providing facilities to the people of the city.

He said the formation of BMA was one of the recommendations in the report submitted by him to the Chief Minister, S.M.Krishna, on Saturday on the outcome of his visit to Australia and New Zealand. The minister visited these countries to participate in the conference organised by HUDCO on a comparative study of infrastructure facilities made available to the people in Australia and India.

Although it would be wrong to compare the development in Australia with that of India as the ground realities were different, he said there was a need to adopt some of the decisions taken in Australia for providing better infrastructure to people in mega cities.

He said that during his stay in Australia he visited Sydney, Adelaide, Canberra, Melbourne and some other cities and was amazed by the development there. One of the main reasons for the orderly development in Australia was the perfect understanding and coordination among different departments.

He regretted that though Bangalore had been identified as one of the fastest growing cities there was not a single authority to look after the overall infrastructure development of the city. At present, the departments and authorities connected with the development of the city were pulling in different directions and this had resulted in disparities in the development of old Bangalore and new Bangalore, which had better facilities.

In his report, Mr. Singh said that he had also suggested the establishment of a dockline link authority for improving infrastructure and communication from the docks to major cities, and setting up of a link road authority which would take care of upgrading and providing road links from village to village, from villages to taluk headquarters, and from taluks to district roads.

The proposed link road authority would be under the Public Works Department.

To another question, he said the department was according top priority for upgrading roads which were not under any department. These roads were being brought under the department and the zilla panchayat roads and village roads were being upgraded as major district roads and some of the major district roads were being declared as State highways.

An action plan was also being prepared for allowing private participation in the maintenance of major district roads from this year.

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