A committee of prominent stakeholders and officials will prepare a blueprint for the city’s development in the next six months, which will guide the incumbent government in developing and governing the city, said Deputy Chief Minister and Bengaluru Development Minister D.K. Shivakumar.
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He was speaking after a meeting with multiple stakeholders of the city to chalk out a road map for Bengaluru’s development. A total of 42 experts and various stakeholders, including members of the city’s industry bodies, CEOs and elected representatives of the city participated in the closed-door meeting held at Vidhana Soudha.
Mr. Shivakumar said this was only the first in a series of meetings and more such meetings will be held soon. Individuals like Kiran Mazumdar-Shaw of Biocon, Infosys co-founder Kris Gopalakrishnan, Revathy Ashok, CEO of B.PAC team, urbanist V. Ravichandar and others participated in the meeting.
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Public consultations
“I have taken suggestions and inputs from them regarding the development of the city. Next week, I will consult the public and then only we will form a committee where officials along with stakeholders will submit a blueprint and master plan in the next six months for the overall development of the city,” Mr. Shivakumar told media persons after the meeting. “All the individuals have given their valuable suggestions which will be considered for the development of the city,” he added.
Issues such as garbage, water crisis, traffic, public transportation, road infrastructure and concern for nature and ecology dominated discussions in the meeting on Saturday. One of those in the meeting told The Hindu that many individuals who spoke at the meeting opined that there should be governance reforms to fix the city.
“A few individuals brought up issues related to them like developers groups listed issues such as TDR, road widening, traffic etc. Many suggested measures like Carpooling, and improving public transport such as bus and metro to reduce the traffic,” he added.
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NICE Road
Mr. Shivakumar said there were suggestions to convert NICE Road into a ring road, to speed up work on the Peripheral Ring Road, and suburban rail, build a network of elevated corridors, and a network of tunnel roads in the city among others.
“We need to chalk out our projects based on the economic situation of the State. Some suggestions, I agree with. We will definitely prioritise Peripheral Ring Road,” he said, adding, a key factor to decongesting Bengaluru was to focus on tier 2 and 3 cities and create jobs locally in these cities.
Task Force
When quizzed about the decision on forming a Bengaluru Task Force “to invigorate the tech city’s infrastructure”, he said a decision on that would be taken only after consultation with the citizens of the city. This comes after his earlier announcement of a task force drew the ire of many, as being “elitist”.
Mr. Shivakumar’s proposal to constitute an elite advisory committee kicked off a debate on the need for such a task force. The idea has its genesis in 1999, when the then Chief Minister S.M. Krishna formed the Bengaluru Agenda Task Force (BATF) headed by Nandan Nilekani, Former CEO, Infosys. In 2010, then Chief Minister B.S. Yediyurappa formed a similar team, Agenda for Bengaluru Infrastructure and Development (ABIDe).
However, the team never convened a single meeting, and it ceased to exist when Mr. Yediyurappa stepped down. But when Mr. Yediyurappa returned as Chief Minister again in 2019, he did not reconstitute the committee. Previous Chief Minister Basavaraj Bommai also did not set up the committee.