Troubles for Bangalore Metro Rail Corporation Ltd. (BMRCL), which is looking for a depot at the end of the Kanakapura Road metro line, may be far from over.
After having had to shift its plans from the edge of Tataguni estate — where, the Forest Department placed objections as the land was in a critical elephant corridor — BMRCL has narrowed in on 15 acres besides NICE Road.
On Friday, BMRCL managing director Pradeep Singh Kharola said 15 acres of private land would be acquired in the coming months, while, nearly 3.11 acres of “forest land” would be needed for the construction of tracks that would ferry metro trains from Kanakapura Road towards this depot.
“The new alignment is best suited and requires only very little forest land. The permission for this can be given by the Forest Department here itself,” he said.
However, to whom does the 3.11 acres belong? Both the Roerich & Devika Rani Roerich Estate Board as well as the Forest Department claim that the land is theirs. Though both are State government entities, the ownership of the land makes a big difference: If it does belong to the board, any permission for the diversion for land has to be sought from the Supreme Court.
“Survey number 38 belongs to the estate board, and we had asked the Forest Department to develop a tree park there on over 100 acres. In 1954, land was ‘deforested’ and was bought by the estate at ₹100 per acre. If any land has to be diverted for metro for this, they have to approach the Supreme Court which had directed that land cannot be used for any other purpose than listed in their 2011 order,” said G.H. Puttahalagaiah, chief executive officer of the estate board.
Till now, no government or private agency had applied for any diversion of land. “I have written at least five letters to the State government saying it is 100% our land and not of Forest Department,” he said, and added that the board had even identified an encroachment of around 24 guntas from a cement factory and issued eviction orders.
However, Forest Department officials said documents “clearly” showed this patch of land as being notified as the U.M. Kaval State forest.
“The gazette notification from 1916 clearly mentions this as a State forest. There are no records of deforesting this land. In this case, the land still belongs to the Forest Department,” said a department official, who added that their recent surveys also showed an encroachment which would be removed.
Starting troubles
The location of the depot on the Green Line — which will complement the existing depot at Peenya — has seen problems since the preliminary location was announced in 2015. Initially, the plan was to acquire a majority part of the tree park for the depot. This would have not only destroyed much of the deemed forest, but also interfered with a critical elephant corridor between Savandurga and Bannerghatta forest.
Kanakapura Road extension by 2018-end
After an inspection of the under-construction extension of Namma Metro’s Green Line on Kanakapura Road, Bengaluru Development Minister K.J. George said on Friday the stretch would be the first of Phase II to be opened to the public by December 2018.
The 6.5-km line has five stations, ending at Anjanapura Layout station. “The works are progressing very fast. Metro authorities have assured us that the civil works will end by March 2018 after which track laying and signalling will take some time. We expect the line to be opened by December 2018,” he said.
Similarly, the extension of Purple Line on Mysuru Road is progressing relatively fast. Metro officials said tenders for the 13-km underground stretch of Red Line between Dairy Circle and Nagawara would be finalised only by the end of the month.
