Commercial activities on any 40 ft road in the city have now been frozen, with the Urban Development Department (UDD) set to roll back its amendment to the Revised Master Plan 2015. The rollback is expected to be notified by this weekend.
The UDD decided to rollback the amendment after severe criticism from High Court of Karnataka. The Citizen Action Forum had challenged the amendment in the High Court.
This effectively means that the Bruhat Bangalore Mahanagara Palike (BBMP) cannot give permission to any commercial activity in a residential area if the road width is 40 feet or below. This is expected to put an end to issues of overcrowding in residential areas like Basavanagudi, Banashankari, Jayanagar, and Koramangala, where the biggest complaint has been commercialisation of residential bylanes.
The UDD amendment to zoning regulations allowed ancillary commercial usage (up to 20 per cent of built-up area) in roads wider than 12 m (around 39.4 feet). While BDA regulations say commercial usage will be allowed only in roads wider than 40 feet. As most of the roads in residential areas are of 40 feet width, the UDD amendment effectively opened up all residential areas to commercial exploitation.
The UDD amendment had allowed full commercial usage of a plot of land in Ring 2 - areas between core Ring Road and Outer Ring Road (ORR) - while BDA affidavit had only allowed it in Ring 3 (areas beyond ORR). Now, full commercial usage will be allowed only in areas beyond the ORR.
Nitin Seshadri, a civic activist and a petitioner questioning the UDD amendment, said that in most areas like Koramangala and Indiranagar, commercial establishments in residential bylanes had led to a lot of civic issues, including overcrowding and lack of parking.
D. Satyamurthy, Additional Chief Secretary, Urban Development Department, said that their earlier amendment of December 2014 will be rolled back to conform to the BDA affidavit submitted to the High Court.
