Driving in Bengaluru metropolis will not be anybody’s thought of enjoyable and even leisure. However there’s a highway in its suburbs that guarantees an out-of-India driving expertise.
On this highway, entry is barely via tolled exit and entry ramps, which implies no pedestrian or bike owner will instantly dart throughout. A big, grassy median and an emergency lane at common intervals on the left would remind Bengaluru’s techies of tree-lined parkways in america of America.
The Bangalore-Mysore Infrastructure Hall (BMICP), higher referred to as NICE Highway, after its promoter Nandi Infrastructure Hall Enterprises, was initially supposed to make driving from Bengaluru to Mysuru a breeze. Thirty years after the challenge was conceived, nevertheless, NICE Highway stays only a hyperlink highway between the IT & ITES hall within the southeast components of town and the economic hall within the southwest, not a freeway connecting two main cities in Karnataka which are 140-km aside.
Now, two wheelers have been banned within the evening. Latest deadly crashes involving rushing autos, hike within the toll payment, and modifications in velocity limits inform a narrative of how NICE highway by no means fulfilled its unique guarantees.
Backyard metropolis’s aspirational highway
NICE Highway was a pet challenge of Deve Gowda who later grew to become its chief detractor too. In 1995, a yr earlier than he grew to become Prime Minister, Mr Gowda signed an settlement as Chief Minister of Karnataka with US-based Ashok Kheny, the pinnacle of SAB Engineering and Development, on setting up the highway. A framework settlement in 1997 envisioned a world-class infrastructure creating round NICE Highway. Moreover the expressway, there have been to be a hoop highway and a hyperlink highway with a number of entry and exit factors. There have been to be 5 new townships alongside the best way.
The ring highway was to attach the essential Bengaluru-Chennai Nationwide Freeway 48, Bengaluru -Mumbai Nationwide Freeway 4 and the Bengaluru-Mysuru Nationwide Freeway 275 (previously State Freeway 17), and therefore take the load off the backyard metropolis’s roads that have been already seeing chock-a-block visitors.
Within the involvement of a non-public participant, in conception and design, in addition to in having tolled ramp entry, NICE Highway was far forward of its time. It was an period when nationwide highways have been poorly laid and maintained, and the Personal-Public-Partnership idea was nonetheless being debated.
The catch was that, to convey the imaginative and prescient into actuality, some 20,000 acres, together with 7,000 acres for highway work and about 13,000 acres for the townships, wanted to be acquired, principally from farmers. Farmers proudly owning fertile irrigated agriculture land grew to become restive and opposed the challenge since they feared lack of land and livelihood. They flagged poor compensation for giving up what they valued most.
Controversies over land acquisition
As the method of land acquisition commenced, NICE was accused of conniving with state authorities officers to amass land in extra. Many requested what was the necessity for the challenge of this scale when the present SH 17 may very well be upgraded. Atmosphere activists charged the challenge would trigger a lot hurt.
Mr. Gowda, who had signed the preliminary settlement, revised his stance. He accused NICE of buying some 11,600 acres of land in extra and mentioned there have been a number of deviations from the unique framework settlement.
Mr. Gowda staged protests, wrote letters to prime ministers and took the matter to court docket. Litigation adopted – in decrease judiciary, Excessive Courts and the Supreme Courtroom. NICE gained lots of the circumstances. It additionally misplaced some latest ones. A 2020 verdict of the apex court docket held that the corporate can use land for housing tasks solely on the designated townships as per the framework settlement, not at intersections close to Bengaluru metropolis.
The Janata Dal (Secular), the regional get together helmed by Mr. Gowda that has a big assist base in Bengaluru Rural, Ramanagara and Mandya districts the place the proposed highway passes via, is opposing the challenge in its present kind. In parallel, the State authorities upgraded the State Freeway 17 to Mysuru right into a four-lane highway in 2004-2005. Later, SH 17 grew to become NH 275 and subsequently upgraded right into a six-lane expressway that was inaugurated in March 2023.
In the meantime, NICE fell brief in executing a number of provisions within the framework settlement similar to in laying of concrete highway. After a lot nudging, this occurred.
In a number of stretches deemed harmful, the corporate, lately, took up modification work. Rising toll fares have been a bone of competition too.
In the meantime, NICE promoter Ashok Kheny jumped into electoral politics, grew to become an MLA and later joined the Congress. In 2016, a legislature home committee headed by former Minister T. B. Jayachandra really helpful a high-level probe by a nationwide company such because the Central Bureau of Investigation or the Enforcement Directorate into “massive scale irregularities” in executing the challenge. It indicted NICE for violating the framework settlement, extreme land acquisition, levying toll with out laying concrete highway, in addition to unlawful mining.
Till at present, NICE has been capable of develop 41 km of the ring highway in South Bengaluru and an 8.5-km hyperlink highway that gives connectivity to the ring highway from town. A meagre 4 km has been developed as expressway in the direction of Mysuru.
Time to wind up?
Even because the challenge stalled, the land NICE acquired particularly close to Bengaluru has turn into a veritable goldmine. A booming actual property market on either side of NICE Highway has led to a number of circumstances of land being “denotified” as no extra wanted for the highway and being diverted for actual property improvement. A superb a part of the land can also be within the Bruhat Bengaluru Mahanagara Palike (BBMP) jurisdiction the place land costs are already excessive.
When H. D. Kumaraswamy, son of Mr. Gowda, headed a JD (S)-BJP alliance within the State throughout 2006-2007, the federal government moved to undermine NICE Highway challenge. It proposed a peripheral ring highway (PRR) that might encircle Bengaluru and whose alignment was near NICE highway, serving instead. He additionally got here up with various townships, together with one at Bidadi, about 30 km from Bengaluru, and really near a township proposed by NICE.
The PRR has not been applied but. It too has run into farmers’ opposition and is tormented by excessive land acquisition prices. Presently, the state authorities is proposing to attach NICE highway with the PRR and make a full circle across the metropolis. In the meantime, NICE has provided its pretty massive median for Namma Metro challenge.
With the brand new six-lane, access-controlled expressway that has lowered the journey time between two cities from about three hours to ninety minutes, the Bangalore Mysore Infrastructure Hall Undertaking has seemingly misplaced its relevance. There have been calls that the State authorities ought to formally put a full cease to the challenge.
