Bengaluru: Hennur flyover still up in the air!

Bengaluru: A flyover at Hennur that has been hanging fire for the last five years has put local residents and the commuting public into great inconvenience. Lack of land acquisition policies has led to the delay and civic agencies will waste a lot of taxpayers’ money to acquire land now, said Nagarjun S., a resident of Hennur.

Due to poor planning in land acquisition, the BDA has to shell out Rs 60 crore for land at the Hennur junction, which is over  Rs 57.88 crore, which is the entire cost of the project.

To clear similar hurdles in land acquisition for infrastructure projects, the state government is thinking of revising the Transferable Development Rights (TDR) Rules and integrating it with the 2013 Land Acquisition Act. This empowers the civic bodies, like the BBMP and BDA, to issue increased FAR for land losers. The new act will encompass land acquisition too, said BBMP sources.

Increasing the TDR from 1.5 to 2.5, which allows land losers to get additional development rights by 2.5 times, helps civic bodies in acquiring land and minimising monetary compensation. The land losers will have the option of either choosing the TDR or monetary compensation. The Act, however, ensures that they cannot deny parting with their land for public infrastructure projects, they said.

The new Act not only gives a fillip to the new infrastructure projects, but also pushes those that have been in cold storage for years now, they said. It is mandatory to obtain the sanctioned building plan to take up any construction across the city and it stipulates the FAR allowed depending on the extent of the site. However, the mode of issue of TDR to the land losers is yet to be finalized.

Urban Development Additional Chief Secretary Mahendra Jain told Deccan Chronicle that the issue is still under deliberation and can be revealed once it is finalized.