Bangalore Development Authority gets another sound rap from Karnataka high court

The high court on Tuesday once again directed the Bangalore Development Authority (BDA) to produce details of layouts planned or ongoing, while hearing a batch of petitions on the acquisition of lands for the formation of the Nadaprabhu Kempe Gowda Layout.

Justice DV Shylendra Kumar once again directed the BDA to produce details of ongoing projects, about when they were initiated and how much time completion of different layouts is expected to take. The details were sought to enable the court to arrive at a decision on whether the BDA could be permitted to go ahead with proposed projects.

Justice Kumar took the BDA to task for not submitting the information that the court had sought.

When the BDA counsel argued that the layouts developed by the Authority were superior to the ones developed by private firms, Justice Kumar said that the comparison ought to be with world class developers, not shoddy, sub-standard ones.

The judge pointed out that the BDA has not provided for the rehabilitation of villagers displaced by layout projects. Also, villages are reduced to slums next to the layout.

Houses are demolished to make way for wider roads once the layout comes up, and villagers thus displaced are not provided for.

“We claim to be a welfare state, in which the downtrodden are uplifted. The BDA should ideally give one 60ft X 40ft site to all the families in these villages before they start allotting sites to anybody else,” justice Kumar said, adding that the laws in this country apply only to the poor, and politicians, judges, advocates, bureaucrats and others fall beyond its purview.