MLA Satish Reddy (Bommanahalli Constituency) presided over a meeting of all office bearers of Residents Welfare Associations (RWA) and the Federation of HSR Layout on June 4, Monday, to discuss infrastructural and other issues. Concerned Engineers responded to questions from the RWAs, closely monitored by the MLA.

Perhaps for the first time, we were happy to see the elected representatives, all the concerned engineers and staff of BBMP, BDA and officials from Police Department, present under one roof in such a review meeting alongside representatives of RWAs. The meeting lasted over two hours and was conducted with utmost seriousness. The grievances and issues were discussed threadbare and explicit directions were given by the MLA to the BBMP, BDA and police officials with clear cut timelines. The MLA was miffed with the civic agencies on abnormal delays on issues like:

• Encroachment of footpaths and road space by vendors, hawkers and mobile food carts all over HSR Layout which has affected the cleanliness, road space availability and safety of pedestrians, unabated dumping of debris.

• The MLA also directed BDA and BBMP to identify a garbage segregation area for HSR Layout immediately. The menace of pigs roaming around all over the sector and of stray dogs were discussed at length and he directed concerned BBMP veterinary staff to take immediate action.

• Asphalting of 27th Main Road from junction of Sarjapur Road/ 27th Main Road to Somasundarapalya, in coordination with BWSSB.

• Shifting of Parangipalya bus stand as 24th Main Road is a bottleneck and accident prone site with high density traffic at peak hours. He said he would personally meet the MD, BMTC along with representatives of RWA in the next few days.

We seek intervention of the HSR Layout Corporator Latha Narasimhamurthy on the issues discussed and monitor the progress by civic agencies, especially BBMP, to ensure all issues are resolved within promised timelines.

Such meetings should be held once in three months presided by the elected representatives. We hope the civic authorities and especially the Joint Commissioner BBMP Bommanahalli zone takes serious cognisance of this meeting and issues suitable guidelines to his staff to complete the tasks within the timelines promised by the MLA and also ensure that the engineers function in a proactive manner in future.⊕