BS Yediyurappa’s aim: Garden City tag back to Bengaluru

Bengaluru: As infighting continues in the BJP, Chief Minister B.S. Yediyurappa will continue to hold the Bangalore Development portfolio and his top priority is to bring the Garden City image back to Bengaluru and to ease traffic woes of the city.

A top BJP leader from the city said, "For the chief minister, the city will be in focus. To demonstrate this, he started his city rounds on Sunday. He is in constant touch with deputy chief minister Ashwathnarayana, ministers Suresh Kumar, R. Ashok and BJP city unit president N.R. Ramesh. These leaders know the problems faced by Bengalureans and update the chief minister regularly."

He said, "Mr Yediyurappa is not happy with the shrinking green cover in the city. Expressing his unhappiness over tree planting drives, he gave an earful to the city's forest officials and directed them to improve the green cover." Next in the CM's list is traffic. He is in touch with urban and mobility experts, and has directed officials to fix the Outer Ring Road. In the coming days, more such plans will be taken up, the source added.

No-nonsense officials like former BBMP commissioner Laxminarayan, principal secretary to CM V.P. Ikkeri and Chief Secretary T.M. Vijay Bhaskar will guide and help the chief minister, he said.

Batting for improving the quality of life, urban expert Sridhar Pabbisetty said. "All agencies should come together and develop integrated plans to address these issues. We get only piecemeal and fragmented responses from each department. Air and water pollution needs to be addressed on priority,"

On traffic, he said, "Intermodal connectivity of public transport is still woefully lacking. A good step will be to ensure smooth coordination between BMRCL and BMTC. Even now, the last-mile connectivity through Metro feeder service has become ineffective compared to the original blueprint presented to citizens. Viewing all public transport mode options in a single mobile app on real-time basis will push more users to switch to public transport."

Brand guru Harish Bijoor said immediate priority areas for Bengaluru are, sadly, many. Elaborating on his top three priorities, he said, "Road condition, garbage management and traffic crawl and congestion issue. Every minute lost on commute time eats into productivity and revenue for business outfits at one end, and loss of personal time, rest and recreation at another. Both important metrics that define the happiness index with a business a city like Bengaluru."