BBMP

Residents of Dollar Scheme layout in BTM 1st stage in south Bengaluru, one of whom is a BBMP employee, have won a major case against parking nusiance in the area. BBMP's garbage contractors were parking vehicles along the roads in their layout. Eleven residents of 32nd and 33rd main in the layout had filed a PIL (Public Interest Litigation) in the High Court in June 2010, asking BBMP and the police department to prevent trucks from being parked in the area. In early January, the court ordered the BBMP to take action within two months to solve the issue. A…

BBMP contractors in charge of disposing garbage are dumping and burning waste in an abandoned quarry near Bengaluru's Begur Lake at Singasandra despite repeated complaints.  Prateek, 34 (name changed on request), a resident of Arattukulam Lake Point Tower  an apartment complex situated nearby, says  that close to 10 trucks dump and burn garbage at the abandoned quarry every day. Children playing amidst the burning rubble not realizing the health hazards. Pic: Lakepoint Tower apartment residents. A network engineer at Yahoo, Prateek says that about 65 families living in the apartment complex wake up to suffocating smoke of garbage burning not…

He is dynamic, well-built and tall. Like many who enter public life after a successful industry career, he has many facets. He is an entrepreneur who founded BPL Mobile in the 90s, a firm that some would call a benchmark for India's telecom revolution. Since 2005, he is a venture-capitalist, and runs Jupiter Capital, with its offices behind Kids Kemp, off M G Road, Bengaluru. And he was a former president of India's largest and oldest chamber of commerce, Federation of Indian Chambers of Commerce and Industry (FICCI).  We have become a single agenda city of traffic, traffic, traffic. Pic:…

Sometime back, we noted that the government had renamed Karnataka’s Urban Development Department as The Great Bengaluru Land Scam Department. Since then, developments have spiralled further and deeper into the mysterious inner workings of our system, and behold: another name change is being announced at the fag end of the year.BBMP is being renamed U-TURN-MP on January 1st!Surprised? You should not be, actually. Here’s the evidence:After repeatedly insisting that a link road was a must through forestland in the prestigious University of Agricultural Sciences’ GKVK campus in north Bangalore and cutting over 680 trees in 2009, BBMP is now, at…

"First they said that our apartment was illegal. When we showed our property documents, BBMP engineers said that it wouldn't matter because we had to give up our land for road widening anyway," says a resident of Rashi Pride apartments on Nyanappanahalli main road, BTM 6th stage. This relatively quiet road located in BTM 6th stage has been in the news lately because the residents raised their voice against BBMP's coercive tactics for land acquisition. Apartment marked for road widening on Nyanappanahalli main road in BTM 6th stage. Pic: Sreenandan A V The resident, who does not wish to be…

The civic club members of Cambridge School, K R Puram, Children's Movement for Civic Awareness (CMCA) organised an awareness campaign on Active Citizenship, in a two-day campaign, last month. Children signing a pledge to be active citizens. CMCA campaign at Cambridge School. Pic courtesy: CMCA. The aim of this awareness camp was to spread the message that the time has come for us, the citizens of Bangalore to snap out of our apathy and engage in local governance An awareness stall was set up in the school on the concept that for our city to transition from a ‘bad' deteriorated city to ‘good'…

"Bangalore is not a garden city any more!" is a common refrain that I have been hearing for over 3 years. It is definitely not the cool town that we had visited a few times during summer in the mid 1980's, escaping the scorching Chennai heat. (Apparently, it was still a pleasant place when my husband started his career here over a decade ago). This situation reminds me of the song Ayyayyo Bengaluru lamenting this city's deterioration rendered during the first edition of Namma Jathre (Freedom Festival) in Cubbon Park in 2006. So what are the reasons for this live…

When the tragic incident of a 13-year-old schoolboy falling from the terrace of an apartment block and losing his life made news a fortnight ago, there was one detail in the media reports that epitomises, in a single sentence, the criminal gap between proper city planning and the ground realities of  Bengaluru as it is developing today. It said, "As there was nowhere for him to play, Allan went up to the terrace to play" - and the rest is a tragedy that has already been reported in the press. High-rise apartment blocks have sprouted like rashes all over the…

Castle Street in the heart the city has turned into a nightmare for residents of the road. Almost four months ago, KPTCL dug up the road to lay their lines which took over a month to be completed. Contractors were hired and water and sewage lines of most of the homes on the road were damaged during the digging. Requests for the lines to be repaired fell on deaf ears and finally private plumbers were hired by most residents to repair their lines. Immediately, BBMP issued notices to the residents and in some cases threatened to take them to the…

On Monday midnight, 120 residents of Sachidananda Nagar got their khatas from the BBMP zonal office at Rajarajeshwari Nagar. “This is a great victory for us. It was ‘freedom at midnight’,” gushes Nethrakere Uday Shankar, 54, one of the leaders of the protest. Shankar is Chief Sub-Editor at a Kannada daily in the city. "I bought a plot in the layout in 1992, and planned to build a house there in 2001. I have been waiting for khata since 2001," he said. It was around 1.40 am when khatas were given away to all. This rare act by the BBMP…