The Mysore City Corporation (MCC) has invited tenders for work on widening of Irwin road, the stretch from the railway station to the arch gate on Bengaluru-Mysuru road.
Widening would be taken up at a total cost of Rs. 24 crore released under the Chief Minister’s special grant. Of the fund, a sum of Rs. 14 crore has been earmarked for land acquisition.
Over 90 property owners on the road, including a temple and a mosque, and people of the ‘Committee to Oppose Widening of Irwin road’ said that their buildings would be disfigured soon after widening and compensation would not suffice to even repair the building.
Besides, heritage buildings would lose its aesthetic appeal once the buildings on the road were demolished partially or fully, the committee said, while urging the MCC to drop the proposal. The committee suggested that the MCC not squander money on road widening and make use of the grants for other “useful development works” in the city.
The MCC proposed to widen the road to 18 metre to make it four-laned. Irwin road is nine to 12 metre wide in different stretches now. As per the plan, a 2 feet median will be erected in the middle of the road.
MCC Commissioner C.J. Betsurmath said that apart from easing traffic on the road, the purpose of road widening was to provide a better look to the heritage buildings on the stretch. He said that owing to encroachments on the road, it had become difficult to locate the heritage structures.
