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In 2016, the Government of Karnataka cancelled the proposed Steel Flyover starting from Basaveshwara Circle to Hebbal. The project was touted as a measure to ease traffic to the International Airport. However following citizen protests and the National Green Tribunal (NGT) order, the government shelved those plans. Come 2019, the Deputy Chief Minister of Karnataka, G Parameshwara reopened the debate, when he said the government was reconsidering the project. The steel flyover project brought forward the citizen activism in the city which many credit for the scrapping of the project by the government. While a large part of the public…

It was among the first PILs that was filed by the Citizens' Action Forum and it wasn’t even their first course of action! For a group that is often accused of being trigger-happy with the judiciary, CAF's petition against the Master Plan 2015 was a last recourse, after they had exhausted all other options.   When the BDA released the draft of its Master Plan 2015, it proposed rapid commercialisation of largely residential areas in Bangalore, allowing for almost unchecked change of land use. Bangalore had begun to boom by the start of the millennium. The rise of the IT…

There were less of suggestions and more of ire against the Bangalore Development Authority (BDA) at the public meeting convened by the BDA to seek suggestion and opinion from public before drafting the Revised Master Plan-2031. Bengalureans who are upset over the routine exercise of convening meetings before introducing the RMP, used the opportunity to attack BDA for the kind of mess it has created in the city. The BDA convened a public meeting on RMP-2031 at Ambedkar Bhavan in Miller’s Road on Wednesday. Members of Citizen Action Forum (CAF), the city-based civic group, questioned the BDA’s power to call…

Bengaluru-based Citizen Action Forum (CAF) has suspected a possible delay of BBMP election due to Palike restructuring process, and said it should be opposed. Addressing media persons here on Thursday, January 23rd, 2015, CAF Secretary Mahalakshmi Parthasarathy said that the Forum fears that the State government would use restructuring as an excuse to delay the election. "The BBMP election has to happen in time. Inordinate delay would only hamper the process of forming functional Metropolitan Planning Council and ward committees. The government issued an order on November 19, 2014, mentioning that the restructuring committee report has to be submitted within…

Over 750 Resident Welfare Associations representing more than ten lakh Bangalore citizens under the platform of Namma Bengaluru Foundation and Bengaluru Residents Association Confederation Ensemble (BRACE) launched a protest against government’s failure to address citizens' concerns about massive corruption in Bangalore and the nexus of corrupt builders and some politicians that is destroying Bengaluru. The campaign that’s a result of the lackadaisical approach by the government despite the repeated pleas over a year now by the forum of BRACE will see a city wide signature campaign demanding the government for a Corruption free city that does not cater to mafias and…

Members of NBF and BRACE holding the press conference.T S Vidhyadhar, D S Rajshekar, Mahalakshmi Parthasarathy, Ravindranath Guru, Subbu Hegde, Nitin Seshadri and others are seen in the picture. Pic: Nikita Malusare Citizen Action Forum (CAF) backed by Namma Bengaluru Foundation (NBF), will question the Akrama Sakrama Bill – 2013 in court shortly. This was revealed in a press conference hosted by NBF on February 5th, 2014. N S Mukunda, President of Citizen Action Forum, who spoke in the press conference, questioned as to why the buyers should be responsible for the mistakes made by the builder. Since the bill…

In January this year, the High Court of Karnataka had ordered that commercial activities should not be allowed in residential areas in Bengaluru. But even after this, BBMP continued to give sanctions in violation of the verdict. Many shops had come up without any BBMP sanctions at all also. Citizen Matters had reported on these violations earlier. Pic: Sudha Narasimhachar However, in a hearing on November 22nd, the court ordered BBMP to submit the list of all such sanctions that it gave in residential areas after the January order. Surprisingly, BBMP informed court that it had cancelled all such sanctions…

The Citizen Action Forum (CAF) submitted their suggestions in response to BDA's call for inputs on the revision of RMP 2015. They sent their letter to the Office of the Town Planning Section of BDA in early July. Dear Sirs, In our interaction with officers of BDA, we have been informed that the exercise mentioned above is a first effort in the preparation of Masterplan 2035 and that feedback on current Masterplan 2015 is a necessary first step.  At the outset we would like to submit that the making of such an important document as the Masterplan for Bangalore, requires extensive and intensive…

Citizen Action Forum, a federation of RWAs met S Suresh Kumar, Minister for Law and Parliamentary Affairs and BWSSB and P S Ramamurthy, Chairman, BWSSB along with team of chief engineers.The meeting held in BWSSB central office Cauvery Bhavan, and we discussed rain water harvesting (RWH) and water supply problems.CAF President N S Mukunda explained practical solutions to water problems. RWH in houses can yield only 2% of water requirement of Bangalore. So RWH should be done in all public (government buildings and 1400 parks in Bangalore. He requested the government not to make RWH mandatory for all, because some…

The Citizens' Action Forum (CAF), a civic action group representing a number of residents' welfare associations in Bangalore, organised a one-day symposium as part of their on-going public dialogues with politicians on 30th August 2008 at Central College. They discussed ways to solve civic problems and debated on two of Bangalore's unsresolved issues: Sakrama and collection of property tax. The programme was structured as panel discussions. Mathew Thomas, general Secretary of CAF made an extensive presentation on ‘Kasturirangan Committee’ (aka Committee on Governance in the Bangalore Metropolitan Region and BBMP, headed by Dr Kasturirangan, ex-chairman of ISRO) for a review…