The Bruhat Bengaluru Mahanagara Palike (BBMP) has failed in its attempt to outsource the maintenance of the revamped Church Street to a private party with few takers for the tender. According to sources, only one company applied for the tender. The BBMP is expected to call for tenders again.
The road constructed on Church Street under TenderSURE, which was opened to the public in March, is 750 metres long, 5.5 metres wide with pavements varying in width from 2.5 metres to 3.5 metres, with granite cobblestones.
The government spent somewhere between ₹9 - 14 crore for building the road.
This April, the civic agency had floated a tender to select a private party to sweep the road twice a day, maintain the LED streetlights and clear the dustbins.
BBMP sources said they would see if the one company which had bid for the tender would qualify the parameters, failing which, they would call for a re-tender. The terms and conditions laid out by the palike have not been viable for private players to take up the maintenance work, sources added.
According to BBMP officials, the cobblestones, which attract smoke and tyre marks, need to be cleaned with water and detergent at least twice a week.
A BBMP engineer said, “BBMP currently does not own machinery for this kind of work. At present, no one is washing it. The road is being swept like any other road.”
Architect Naresh Narasimhan, who designed the aesthetics of the road, said the road needs to cleaned with water frequently and clearing of garbage at least half a dozen times every day. “As it is a road that sees a high number of footfalls, it requires a lot of maintenance,” he said.
There have been suggestions to ban vehicular traffic on the road in the evening.
A shopkeeper on Church Street, requesting anonymity, said even though the road is being maintained well at present, garbage clearance was an issue.
“From what I have seen, pourakarmikas clean the road twice a day.
“However, during the weekend, clearing the dustbins is a huge challenge owing to the sheer number of visitors. By Monday morning, the dust bins are overflowing.”
'It’s not privatisation’
Amidst criticism that the BBMP had set out to privatise the road, palike officials maintained that the road is not being ‘privatised’. A senior official said, “Privatisation would be when we transfer ownership of the road. There is no such provision. This is just outsourcing maintenance. Roads are public property and they cannot be privatised.”
