Bengaluru: The Bruhat Bengaluru Mahanagara Palike (BBMP) has dismantled a near –complete Indira Canteen near Cantonment Railway Station. The structure was situated at a park next to the traffic signal on Millers Road.
“We had set up the canteen in the park that we had recovered from slum-dwellers who had encroached on it. It was the BBMP who maintained it. However, when we started building the canteen, South Western Railway (SWR) objected,” said BBMP Commissioner N. Manjunath Prasad.
He said with the SWR claiming the land as theirs, the BBMP had written to them, even offering to pay a licensing fee for using the land for the public purpose project.
“Leasing the land is part of their rules. But, their reaction was negative. We were forced to shift the canteen,” the BBMP Commissioner said.
The canteen had neared completion before the August 15 deadline of the Phase I of the project. While the nearby canteen for Vasanthnagar ward was opened, this remained just a shell owing to denial of permission by the Railways. Railway officials, however, said there had been no formal proposal from the State government for the land and they had documents to conclusively prove the land was theirs.
