BMIC’s boss blames bigwigs for problems

BANGALORE, DHNS:

Breaking their silence, promoters of the Bangalore-Mysore Infrastructure Corridor (BMIC) project have said that acquiring lands belonging to “influential people” was the main reason for the project being termed as controversial.

“Nearly 40 per cent of the land acquired for our project belongs to influential people as the land is located in prime areas around Bangalore,” said Ashok Kheny, Managing Director of Nandi Infrastructure Corridor Enterprises that is implementing the BMIC. The project comprises a four-lane expressway linking Bangalore and Mysore, peripheral road and five townships.

In an interview with Deccan Herald, Mr Kheny said, “unlike BDA, we took a policy decision to go ahead with acquiring of land without discriminating against the social or political status of land owners. Hence, many influential people are angry with us. But farmers, who had parted with their land, had no problems. Also, we did not face any constraints in acquiring land in areas away from Bangalore”.

“In fact certain IAS officers too are up in arms against us for acquiring their land in Bangalore city outskirts. We did not yield to their demand for altering our road alignment plans”, he said. Besides, the company decided to pay compensation only to original land-owners. This has angered the land mafia, which tries to corner compensation by getting General Power of Attorney, he said. Referring to allegations that the company had acquired excess land for the project and that thousands of acres of land had been denotified with vested interests, he said 20,193 acres of land will be acquired for the project and that only about 30 acres of acquired land has been denotified.

He also pointed out that the company had obtained a court stay over such a denotification of the previous government. The denotification was effected by the Krishna government on the last day in office. If there are no irregularities, then why delay in implementation of the project? Mr Kheny said obtaining all the required clearances and legal battle delayed the project. “We have taken nearly 10,000 clearances and met nearly 300 IAS officers in the last seven years.” Still we are in a better position when compared with other infrastructure projects like Bangalore international airport project, which took three years more than BMIC to achieve financial closure. The Elevated Light Rail Project could never take off, he pointed out.

Despite a hue and cry over the project, Mr Kheny is confident of completing the project. He said the first phase of the project with a stretch of 62 km (including peripheral & link road) will be completed by August 2005, the second phase of works with expressway till Channapatna by August 2006 and final phase by August 2007.

Reacting sharply to former chief minister S M Krishna’s demand for shelving the BMIC, Mr Kheny wondered, “whether the Arkavathy layout project of BDA and International Airport projects would also be shelved and the acquired land returned to land-owners as the projects are also facing similar allegations.” He said it was not easy to shelve the project as the MoU entered with the Government in this regard have strict legal procedures. “We have not violated any of the contract norms. Why should the contract be terminated?”.



The BMIC project has faced many hiccups from the day it was conceived. The project is in thick of controversy after the coalition government came to power in the State. Chief Minister Dharam Singh seems to be at loss to find a way to silence the detractors - including JD (S) supremo H D Deve Gowda - who are alleging irregularities the land deal. Add to Mr Singh’s woes, former chief minister S M Krishna has demanded scrapping for the project. Deccan Herald will look at the issues related to the controversial mega project.