The Bruhat Bangalore Mahanagara Palike’s (BBMP) ambitious proposal of roping in Confederation of Real Estate Developers Association in India (CREDAI), Bangalore chapter, for improvement of road junctions in the city is unlikely to take off.
Just over a month ago, the BBMP announced that around 60 junctions in the city would be handed over to CREDAI for maintenance for a period of five years. The Commissioner held talks with the representatives of CREDAI and discussed the modalities. All that now remains is the official signing of the memorandum of understanding between the BBMP and CREDAI.
However, official sources in the BBMP told The Hindu that the councillors were not in favour of handing over the junctions to CREDAI after the latter recently claimed before presspersons that “the city’s developers were facing tremendous harassment by a few councillors.”
“Many councillors feel that the BBMP should have no association with these developers. The whole proposal now hangs in a balance due to this,” they said.
Sources said that the interested developers, including Mantri Developers Pvt. Ltd., Purvankara Group, Brigade Group and Adarsh Developers, were asked to send in designs to the BBMP of their proposed plans for the junctions. “In anticipation of the signing of the MoU, we even gave the developers consent letters on May 23. We asked them to engage a consultant for geometric drawings and design aspects and gave them 15 days’ time to submit the same,” they said.
They said that the developers were explained that junction improvement would entail redesigning, checking the feasibility of having a free left, centralised island, footpath improvement up to 100 m in all directions from the junction, barricading the footpaths and painting of zebra crossing.
What is worrying the officials further is that no designs have yet been submitted to the BBMP by CREDAI.
“The BBMP wanted to hand over the junctions as the Commissioner felt that the developers must also contribute to the city. Another reason is fund crunch. Handing over the junctions to CREDAI is seen as a win-win situation for the BBMP,” sources added.
The BBMP was also exploring the possibility of roping in corporate sector to adopt certain roads, parks, lakes, school buildings and hospitals for a period of five years. “Nothing has been decided as yet. This proposal is still in the pipeline,” they said.
