Road Widening hits a road block?

psaram42 - 11-JUL-2010

Today’s Sunday times had the head line on road widening ahead of Food Ball news for a change.

Your house cannot be taken forcibly under TDR.

“As per the rules, BBMP can take up road widening only under the Transferable Developments Rights Scheme (TDR). If the private property owner does not cooperate in giving away his land for road widening the process cannot be taken up legally”

The only option for BBMP is to forcibly acquire the property by paying current market rate under Karnataka land acquisition act. What then was the relevance of BBMP TDR in the first place? Was it to take away the property without proper compensation? 

Where are those GIM projects?

silkboard - 4-JUL-2010

After all the tamasha, a global meet attended mostly by Indians, and those concerns looming around equitable use of natural resources and land acquisition, it is all the more important for state government to share as much follow up information on GIM announcements as possible. But the GIM website as gone cold (no updates after June 4!) and as always, we are at the mercy of our journalist friends to know more.

Business Standard covered GIM last week, twice. First time on June 21, Karnataka clears 69 new investment proposals. Exceprts:

SHLCC .... cleared 69 new industrial investment proposals worth Rs 87,494 crore. This was the first meeting of SHLCC after the recently concluded global investors’ meet (GIM).

Wonder where to find minutes of SHLCC meetings

IGI Airport Vs BIAL

Sanjeev - 3-JUL-2010

PM unveils world's 6th largest terminal at IGI Airport

Delhi today got a spanking new world-class Rs 9,000 crore airport that will integrate domestic and international operations and is expected to handle 34 million passengers annually

Apply chennai's story in Bangalore ?

thampan - 19-JUN-2010

Just read this blog entry  on "Indian Liberals and Colour Pictures" by Amit Verma . Among other things, he talks about how colour pictures were used to transform chennai roads.

Excerpt : (Emphasis mine)

Cherubal works as a coordinator at Chennai City Connect, and holds the view that politicians and bureaucrats, sometimes caricatured as the villains in the piece by dogmatic liberals, are often on our side, and agree with us about the nature of the problems. But giving them abstract ideas about what to do is pointless, for they don’t have the bandwidth to take them further. The only effective approach is two-pronged: One, show them case studies to demonstrate that our solutions have worked elegantly elsewhere; Two, give them a detailed road-map of how to implement the solution.

BIAL Logo

shas3n - 20-JUN-2007

BIAL Logo

550 wealthy biggies owe 2.5 lakh crores in income taxes!

kbsyed61 - 14-JUN-2010

TOI carried a report on biggest IT defaulters saying 550 top defaulters who owe more than 25 crores.

..Till March 31, the total arrears were Rs 2.30 lakh crore and with the start of the new fiscal, another Rs 20,000 crore has been added to this figure. Last year, the department had managed to recover nearly Rs 12,000 crore. The target for this year has been fixed at Rs 14,000 crore...

http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/India/550-biggies-on-Rs-25cr-tax-defaulters-list/articleshow/6044719.cms

Is it case of less of enforcement and more of corruption?

Kaggadasapura Lake Encorachment - Commendable work Mr. Mayor

psaram42 - 11-JUN-2010

From a newspaper report last week:

“Bangalore: Mayor S K Nataraj conducted a surprise inspection of Kaggadasapura lake on Wednesday and ordered for the immediate clearance/demolition of a road that was built across the lake. After the inspection, mayor said: “It was an informal visit to C V Nagar assembly constituency where I was alerted by the local MLA about the the construction of a road in midst of the lake. Instructions have been given to demolish the road and clear theencroachments.” 

Further

" ... Kaggadasapura lake is spread across 46 acres of land. While MLA S Raghu said he will fund Rs 75 lakh for fencing of the lake area, mayor vowed Rs 3.75 lakh for upgradation of the lake. Nataraj also visited Benniganahalli lake and Hosakere lake during his visit.”

Maharajah's 13 acre donation to Bangalore

idontspam - 8-JUN-2010

Bangalore's Big Dig Dream?

Ravi_D - 4-JUN-2010

This DH Report on 10/May notes: "The State government has long-term plans to build tunnel roads in the City to ease traffic congestion" said ..... Minister R Ashok on Monday.

Consider this against the effort spent reducing the length of Namma Metro Under Ground alignment.

Binny Mills to KG Bus Stand is one such tunnel road being discussed. Fortunately, "the proposals are in preliminary stage and nothing concrete has emerged so far, he said".    

BTW, Namma metro's west bound UG alignment is not too far away!

Solar power proposal to State

reevs - 3-JUN-2010

not sure how and where to follow-up on this one....