BDA appoints officials to acquire land for PRR, starts issuing notices to landowners in Bengaluru

On September 5, the State Cabinet decided to implement the project on its own, and not through the Public Private Partnership (PPP) mode. Karnataka has decided to raise loans to the tune of 70% of the project’s cost, now estimated to be around ₹30,000 crore.
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The Bangalore Development Authority (BDA) has begun serving notices to owners of 1,810 acres of land, notified way back in 2007 for the main carriageway of the Peripheral Ring Road, now renamed Bengaluru Business Corridor (BBC).

These landowners are being served notices asking them to submit their ownership records and file objections, if any, to their land being acquired for the project. This is the first time such notices are being issued for the project’s main component, say farmers. 

This is the most concrete step taken by the BDA towards implementing the project in these many years. On September 5, the State Cabinet decided to implement the project on its own, and not through the Public Private Partnership (PPP) mode. Karnataka has decided to raise loans to the tune of 70% of the project’s cost, now estimated to be around ₹30,000 crore.

With Deputy Chief Minister and Bengaluru Development Minister D. K. Shivakumar spearheading the project, the BDA is keen to move ahead and issue tenders for civil works soon, sources said.  

Jagadish, Deputy Commissioner, Land Acquisition, BDA said they had appointed nine officers as dedicated Special Land Acquisition Officers (SLAOs) for the project. Each officer was made in-charge of acquiring land in all villages along a 8-km stretch of the proposed PRR.

Meanwhile, BDA is all set to issue the final notification for 600 acres of additional land for which preliminary notification was issued in 2022, to build cloverleafs, toll plazas, integrate PRR with NICE Road at Tumakuru Road and Hosur Road junctions, he added. 

Compensation package – the elephant in the room

Farmers, who have received these notices from the BDA, are upset that the notices have been served under Land Acquisition Act, 1894, and not the existing The Right to Fair Compensation and Transparency in Land Acquisition, Rehabilitation and Resettlement Act, 2013, which replaced it. 

“We have also approached the High Court of Karnataka that the project had lapsed. We want the notification for land acquisition to be quashed. But we are now ready to give up our land provided they provide us compensation under the existing land acquisition act. We will file our objections to these notices asking BDA to compensate us as per the new law,” said Raghu N., a farmer from Huskur, Anekal, who has got a notice from the BDA. 

A senior BDA official said that compensation under the new law is not feasible, and has been ruled out. “The notices have been issued under the old law as it was under that law that the final notification was issued in 2007. While the proceedings will be carried out under the 1894 law, we do understand that the compensation under that law would be too meagre. The compensation package will be worked out under the BDA Act, 1976. The State Government is yet to take a final call on the compensation package, which is still being worked out,” he said. 

However, farmers are adamant that they wouldn’t give up their land unless compensated under the existing law.

Kodihalli Chandrashekhar, President, Karnataka Rajya Raitha Sangha, is spearheading the farmers’ resistance to land acquisition for the PRR project. “Farmers wouldn’t give up their land unless compensated under the new law,” he said.