BDA chairman NA Haris welcomes Additional Chief Secretary LK Atheeq on Tuesday.
Credit: Special Arrangement
Bengaluru: Additional Chief Secretary (ACS) LK Atheeq on Monday took charge as the head of the Bengaluru Business Corridor Ltd, which was constituted with the sole responsibility of implementing the 73-km Peripheral Ring Road (PRR).
The post was earlier held by Deputy Chief Minister DK Shivakumar, but the state cabinet had recently decided to appoint an IAS officer for the top executive role.
With the appointment of Atheeq, an IAS officer of the 1991-batch, the project — which was in cold storage for nearly two decades — may finally take off as he already holds two powerful positions in the government: ACS to Chief Minister Siddaramaiah as well as the Finance Department. This is likely to help in raising a loan to fund the project.
So far, Shivakumar ensured the project — costing Rs 27,000 crore — gets approved by the state cabinet. The government has also offered to compensate the farmers on par with the Centre’s Land Acquisition Act of 2014 although it had recently reduced the guidance value of the land notified for the project. The cost of acquiring about 2,650 acres has been estimated at Rs 21,000 crore and the rest for civil works.
Other than Atheeq, the Bengaluru Business Corridor Limited will have 11 members, including representatives of the Bruhat Bengaluru Mahanagara Palike (BBMP), Bangalore Development Authority (BDA), and urban development, finance and public works departments.
BDA's engineer member, finance member, assistant commissioner, and town planning member will be part of the core team. The chairman of the BDA will be the vice-chairperson of the new entity.
At the moment, the BDA has started issuing notices to the land-losers as part of the acquisition process. The authority has promised to compensate anywhere between Rs 6 crore and Rs 8 crore per acre of land. It’s learnt that the BDA plans to float tenders for the construction work very shortly, but the authorities cannot sign the contract without taking custody of 80 per cent of the land required for the project.