Will the much delayed mega infra project of Peripheral Ring Road (PRR), connecting Hosur Road and Tumakuru Road, ever be implemented or is the project as good as dropped?
While the Bengaluru Development Minister K.J. George maintains the government is committed to implementing it, the State government is clear on its inability to fund the cost of acquiring 1,920 acres of land, that has ballooned to Rs. 8,100 crore.
Faced with virulent protests from farmer leaders and land losers of 28 villages along PRR, a special committee led by the Chief Secretary will now submit a report in three weeks, on the best alternative financing options for acquiring land for the PRR without the government having to fund it. Mr. George announced the committee at a meeting with farmers of 28 villages whose lands have been notified for the project on Monday.
Not just the land losers, urban planners in the last stages of finalising Master Plan 2031, are in a dilemma whether to plan with or without PRR.
While urban experts had suggested that the government go the land pooling way, like in the Surat Ring Road model, the Minister vetoed it as that required further notification of huge tracts of lands, expected to hit a roadblock with virulent protests.
Another model that the government is now favourably considering is the Cluster Development Model – to develop land commercially at the intersection of all arterial roads and PRR, for which again over 600 acres have to be notified and acquired apart from the 1,920 acres.
Meanwhile, with assurance from Nitin Gadkari, Minister for Road Transport and Highways, to partially fund the project, the government is also exploring if the project could be taken over by the National Highways Authority of India (NHAI). The Minister said that the CS-led committee will explore this option too and come out with an action plan.
Farmers angry
Farmers whose lands have been notified for the Peripheral Ring Road, are an angry lot, as their lands have been locked for the project without any compensation for 12 years now, since 2004.
Raghu, a landloser told The Hindu that the project had left their lives hanging in a balance for over a decade now and it was high time that the government cleared the air, pay them compensation or drop the project altogether.
Farmer leader Kodihalli Chandrashekhar said that BDA had time and again come up with innovative modes of compensation, which all had as its bottomline acquiring more land and developing it into commercial real estate. “Our demand is that the land losers be paid monetary compensation as per the new Land Acquistion Act, 2013 or drop the project altogether,” he said.
The farmers have now given a month’s ultimatum to the government to either go ahead with the project paying them monetary compensation or drop it altogether. The next meeting with farmers is scheduled on June 21, 2016.
