Bengaluru bulldozed: Nexus of Netas and Babus

The Garden City should follow the 1908 layout, according to the city’s municipal corporation.

WrittenBy:T S Sudhir
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This year on August 9, the day India’s freedom fighters had launched the Quit India movement against the British in 1942, Bengaluru went back to the British Raj. The Bruhut Bengaluru Mahanagara Palike (BBMP) dug out the 1908 layout of Bengaluru and declared it will go by these revenue records prepared by its then British rulers to locate the 2000-odd rajakaluve or storm water drains that were part of the city, more than a century ago. Under fire for the city getting flooded on July 29 because constructions have come over most of these drains, allowing no outlet of water, the BBMP has decided to get bulldozer-happy.

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The officials had been given the go-ahead from chief minister Siddaramaiah who now holds Bengaluru city portfolio. They decided to hit the ground running, starting from the area that was worst-hit during the recent rain – Kodichikkanahalli in south Bengaluru. Here BBMP surveyed 800 properties, poring over maps – 1908 and present – to identify 19 properties constructed right on the main rajakaluve.

In a one kilometre stretch in neighbouring Kasavanahalli, 8 houses and 5 plots were identified. While four were completely demolished, the others said they will themselves remove the portion protruding into the drain. The government says its intention is to reclaim the land, they call Bengaluru, back.

“The officials and citizens must know there is a law of the land,” warns Manjunath Prasad, BBMP commissioner. “In some places, a 33 feet wide storm water drain has been reduced to just 3 feet by encroachments.”

But what about the law of the land that was bent to allow the construction in the first place, ask angry residents. Nishika, whose family has been staying in Kodichikkanahalli since 2000, says for the past 16 years, the house plan states that the Rajakaluve is in front of their house. “Now we are told it passes below our house,” says Nishika.

Another resident, Geeta brings out her property tax receipts. “Do they mean to say they have been collecting property tax on an illegal property all these years? Why should we suffer for the mistakes the officials committed,” she asks.

The BBMP was prepared for this finger-pointing. “ The officials who are responsible will also be punished. FIRs will be registered against them simultaneously. But citizens should have been diligent,” says Parameshwarappa, Chief engineer of BBMP.

What diligence is the BBMP talking about, asks Ravi Chander, whose house has been marked for demolition too. “I have the map here with approval from the Bengaluru Development Authority (BDA),” he says.

That the BBMP and BDA approved these plans points to a rot in the system and in the Town planning department in particular, admit authorities. Twenty municipal officials have now been identified against who action will be taken. But citizens argue that to claim that just 20 allegedly corrupt babus helped Bengaluru build on 480 km of the 857 km long storm water drain, seems rather implausible.

Though the process of surveying is still on, the government estimates that some 1100 buildings will face the music over the next four months in areas like Yelahanka, Mahadevpura and Bommanahalli.

One of them will be the house of Pathankot martyr Lt Col Niranjan Kumar in Doddabommasandra near Vidyaranyapura in north Bengaluru. The family of the NSG commando, who was a member of the bomb disposal squad, now finds it is sitting on a ticking time bomb. A red mark has been put on their house, indicating that the pillar that is built on the adjoining storm water drain has to be brought down. The problem is if the pillar goes, the top floor that it supports will be risky to live in.

A look at the house indicates that the construction had indeed crossed the line and the pillar was built on the rajakaluve. But the narrative is being sought to be hijacked and altered by a hyperventilating electronic media that is trying to give a “nationalistic” spin to the story by branding the government insensitive, for its move to rob a braveheart’s family of a roof over their head. Niranjan’s brother Shashank however, is not joining in the media-created cacophony, saying the family will remove the pillar but requests for time to do so.

“Law is the same for everyone and we cannot be seen as making an exception. But if the family wants time, it can be given so long as it does not affect the process,” says N A Haris, Congress MLA from Bengaluru.

Residents in Niranjan’s neighbourhood are upset with the media reducing a larger civic problem to one of a martyr being insulted. Sanjay, a techie in Niranjan’s neighbourhood in Doddabommasandra says, “Niranjan’s family is very close to us. But while their problem is being highlighted, what about people like us.” Sanjay took a loan of Rs. 25 lakh to build a room on the first floor, with the civic body stating the house plan is in the clear. Now with the BBMP having changed its mind, half his dwelling has been reduced to rubble. The reality of EMIs however does not go away.

Bengaluru today is a city of broken dreams and demolished trust. Despite corrupt town planners and in some cases, builders having led citizens up the garden path, the government is not talking of any compensation. A significant number of residents are likely to approach the Karnataka High court for justice.

But from the Bengaluru civic administration’s point of view, this clean-up had to happen sooner than later given that the government takes the stick when the city goes under water. But while civil society agrees that Bengaluru needs closure to its mess, the question being asked is whether this is yet another annual kneejerk response to floods. In June last year, a similar exercise was undertaken and a few constructions on lake beds in different parts of Bengaluru were brought down. The administrative approach so far has been to cure the malaise of cancer-like unregulated growth with band-aid.

Another criticism is that only the middle class residents of Bengaluru have been targeted while the big corporate groups that have built their glitzy shopping malls on lake beds, have been spared. The Karnataka assembly appointed KB Koliwad committee on Tank encroachment in Bengaluru reported this year that 11595 organisations and people had encroached upon 10472 acres of lake and tank beds. Most of the guilty parties are government agencies and builders. An Indian Institute of Science study in 2016 found that 98 per cent of the city’s lakes are encroached and 90 per cent polluted by sewage, with the foaming Bellandur lake now an oft-seen representative image of a stinking Silicon Valley.

“There has been a nexus of netas and babus who have made it their core competence by selling this loot to unsuspecting site and flat buyers,” says Sridhar Pabbisetty, CEO of Namma Bengaluru Foundation, a civil society initiative. “Who are the biggest beneficiaries of this loot? Certainly not the 20 by 30 feet site owners in Doddabommasandra. They are the ones who have been duped. The government should go after those who sold such counterfeit sites.”

Will Siddaramaiah show the same spunk to take on the big builders? That will be a huge task given that Bengaluru is today ruled by the real estate lobby. If one in every two corporators in the previous BBMP (2010-2015) of 198 ward members was from a real estate background, the percentage has jumped to 60 per cent in the present body that was elected in 2015. Top ministers in Siddaramaiah cabinet and senior Congress leaders have their hand in the developer pie, making them interested parties in encouraging encroachments, bending the rules and killing the water bodies.

In Kasavanahalli, Nishant who has been a Bengalurean for three decades, sits forlorn by his demolished home with a piece of paper that is now not worth even the government order printed on it. It is the occupancy certificate of his home, ironically issued to him by BBMP just five months back. He borrowed heavily to build his villa, which the same BBMP now tells him is unauthorised. A classic case of Bengaluru’s right hand not knowing what the right hand is doing.

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