City: Bengaluru

Poll plans roll out Many are worried that as civic officials have been posted to election duties for the upcoming Assembly polls on May 10th, the ongoing infrastructure projects will be affected. Meanwhile, Chief Election Commissioner Rajiv Kumar said that urban apathy is a concern in elections. Against the 72% polling in the state in the 2018 Assembly elections, the city's constituencies had only around 55% polling. He said that the EC (Election Commission) has reached out to IT firms, colleges and start-ups to increase awareness. To increase voter participation, the BBMP (Bruhat Bengaluru Mahanagara Palike) listed out some initiatives…

For the record, Gubbalala Lake, located in Raghavendra Layout close to Vajarahalli Metro Station, is an eight-acre 10 gunta waterbody. In reality, it occupies just four acres and 20 gunta. It is suspected that about two acres of the lake’s land have been encroached upon. The lake has four inlets and one outlet, with a walkway length of 810 meters and a main bund length of 160 metres. The catchment area is about two square kms. The lake is situated in the 110 villages scheme/areas of BWSSB (BBMP vide a notification in the year 2008 acquired gram panchayats with 110…

The Karnataka and Bruhat Bengaluru Mahanagara Palike (BBMP) Budgets, 2023-24, recently announced that 75 junctions of Bengaluru would be improved, at a cost of Rs 150 crore. In keeping with this vision, the BBMP and Bengaluru Traffic Police, in collaboration with World Resources Institute India (WRI India), under the Bloomberg Philanthropies Initiative for Global Road Safety (BIGRS), launched the Suraksha 75 Mission 2023 initiative on March 25th. The Suraksha 75 Mission aims to create people-centric and holistic intersection designs to make them safe, efficient, inclusive, and universally accessible. This initiative aims to make Bengaluru's busy intersections safer for pedestrians, along…

The K-100 stormwater drain cuts across 23 wards in the city as it traverses from its source near Majestic Bus Stand to its destination – Bellandur Lake. The geographies of these drains and its surrounding areas serve as important starting points in understanding city planning and the context of urban floods. The ‘K’ in the K-100 stands for the Koramangala Valley and the ‘100’ denotes that it is the first primary stormwater drain (SWD) of the valley. The K-100 has multiple secondary and tertiary drains, numbered K-101, K-102 etc. intersecting at different points. The drain serves a catchment area of…

In recent years, we have seen a dramatic rise in instances of flooding, along with increasing population density and expanding concrete surfaces. All these add extra pressure to the stormwater drain networks, which also put people living near drains at risk. Therefore, the question that arises is do we need to revisit engineering designs of stormwater drains? Pipes and sewage drains, symbolic of the colonial period, displaced the traditional systems of water from wells and lakes. This is because piped water, which brings water into the city, and drains, carrying sewage out, were viewed as indicators of modernity. The problem…

Residents of Chokkanahalli and Sampigehalli have been fighting to save their neighbourhood lake, Venkateshpura Kere. The lake was listed as 10 acres 35 guntas by BDA and BBMP until a few years ago, but has slowly been reduced to 6 acres and 35 guntas on paper. Read more about this in part 1. The remaining four acres, which comprise the lake watershed area, has been notified as a Civic Amenity (CA) site by BDA; part of this has been leased to a private trust. BBMP, which is the custodian of the lake, has done little to address the concerns of…

Road construction on Hosakerehalli Lake stopped On March 11th, BBMP Special Commissioner (Projects) P M Ravindra said that engineers will remove mud immediately and restore the 59-acre Hosakerehalli lake, the main water source at Rajarajeshwari Nagar, to its original condition. Earlier, Horticulture Minister and area MLA Munirathna had denied that a permanent road was being built through the Hosakerehalli Lake. However, he admitted that a temporary road was laid just to clear silt, as the lake is spread over 50 acres and has collected silt over the last 100 years. The BBMP will develop a model lake and build a…

Distraught residents of Chokkanahalli, a neighbourhood near Jakkur in North Bengaluru, watch everyday as a rocky outcrop, which is part of a monument, is demolished by a private trust. The remains are currently being dumped into their neighbourhood lake, Venkateshpura. Chokkanahalli Sampigehalli Abhivriddhi Forum (CSAF), a residents group in the area, alleges that the BDA notified a portion of the lake as a Civic Amenity (CA) site and allotted it to a private trust. They have been trying to stop the construction and demand a resurvey of the lake. But neither BDA, which has allotted the land, nor BBMP, which…

Climate change is experienced in the form of erratic, unpredictable and extreme weather changes in the various seasons. This is impacting the periodic appearance of leaves, flowers, and fruits on the seasonal trees around us. Observing these changes regularly can give an insight into climate change's impact on biodiversity in India. Since trees are the basis of all life, including ours, understanding the impact of climate change on trees is imperative. For over a decade, SeasonWatch is leading a citizen science project following the patterns of emergence and maturation of leaves, flowers and fruits (“phenology”) on common tree species of…

Amidst much anticipation, the Bruhat Bengaluru Mahanagara Palike (BBMP) presented its budget for the fiscal year 2023-24 on March 2nd. The total projected budget for this fiscal year stands at Rs 11, 163 crores. The budget's main focus is on construction and maintenance of road infrastructure, as has been the trend in the past years as well. This is mainly because of the sub-par quality of construction requires repeated expenditure on operation and maintenance.  It was announced that the total receipts of BBMP during 2023-24 will be Rs 7,070.11 crore, while the total Centre-State grants will be Rs 4,093.86 crore.…