Bengaluru: Bharatiya Janata Party MLA S Suresh Kumar on Thursday appealed Chief Minister Siddaramaiah not to go ahead with the proposed steel flyover between Basaveshwara Circle and Hebbal due to the strong opposition from public.
Suresh Kumar, in a letter to the chief minister, said that any government should be sensitive, accountable, responsive and transparent but in this case, all these essential qualities of administration are conspicuously absent. “There are many reasons for the opposition of the proposed steel flyover. One of the reasons is that there has been no public hearing on this massive project involving nearly Rs 1800 crore. The other reason is that details of this project are not made public. Many judgments of Supreme Court have ordered that public hearing is necessary on any public project involving a huge amount of money. In fact there are very easy alternative solutions to ease traffic on Bellary Road that has been studied by these concerned activists but their voice is not reaching the authorities because of the vested interests involved in building the steel flyover,’’ Suresh Kumar said.
He said the environmentalists were upset about the number of trees – 862 – to be cut to make way for the proposed steel flyover. “The Bengaluru Development Authority has that they will plant 10 saplings for each tree that will be cut. It will be nonsensical lie since nowhere such promise is fulfilled. More than that, if at all the BDA plants saplings as they assure, nobody knows where,’’ he said.
He said a massive human chain would be organized on Sunday from Basaveshwara Circle and BDA Junction. “If the protest is ignored, it may become very costly for this government. BJP, very clearly, emphatically supports this movement against the unnecessary steel flyover construction and we demand the government to stop taking further steps without giving an opportunity for the concerned citizens through a public hearing,’’ he said.
