The Karnataka Cabinet on Thursday approved the 117-km Peripheral Ring Road (PRR) project, which has been renamed Bengaluru Business Corridor (BBC), in a bid to decongest the city. The 27,000 crore project, which will likely be completed in the next two years, will be executed under the Bengaluru Development Authority (BDA).
The announcement was made by Karnataka Deputy Chief Minister DK Shivakumar, who said the state government is rewriting history by announcing such a "big project". Speaking at a press conference, Shivakumar said the project will connect the Tumakuru Road to the Mysuru Road through Yelahanka and Electronic City.
Around 73 km of the road, Shivakumar said, will be North Bengaluru while the rest will be in South Bengaluru. He also said the state government will take a loan of Rs 27,000 crore for this project through Housing and Urban Development Corporation Limited (HUDCO).
How this project will deal with Bengaluru's traffic?
During the press conference on Thursday, Shivakumar said the project will help in reducing the traffic inside Bengaluru by 40 per cent, as "vehicles moving would be using this road instead of passing through the city". However, the deputy chief minister noted that the new design limits the width of the project to 60 metres instead of the proposed 100 metres.
"The initial notification was for a road width of 100 meters, but we have decided to keep the road width of 65 meters, which is as wide as the Bengaluru-Mysuru highway. It will have a provision of 5 meters for a metro project in the future. The remaining 35 meters of land will be given back to farmers as compensation," Shivakumar said.
He also said that the government will provide 40 per cent development land in BDA layouts to those landowners who don't want commercial land. He said there is also a provision to provide "twice the value of the market rate as compensation".
"If some land owners refuse to give the land, we will place the compensation as a deposit money in the court and proceed with the project. No land will be de-notified at any cost. The growing traffic in Bengaluru is suffocating, and hence the government has taken this historic decision," Shivakumar said, noting that the project will likely cost less than Rs 10,000 crore as more farmers will opt for land compensation.
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