A view of Bengaluru Development Authority (BDA) office
Credit: DH Photo/S K Dinesh
Bengaluru: The Bangalore Development Authority (BDA) is struggling to deal with the increasing number of court cases and this has left many site allottees in a lurch.
According to data by the BDA, close to 5,468 cases are pending with various courts and majority of them are related to land acquisition and layout formation. Over the last three years, the BDA has been successful in getting a resolution to only close to 2,000 cases and such delay in legal proceedings has left many BDA properties in the hands of land grabbers and created connectivity issues in layouts developed by the authority.
For instance, at the Nadaprabhu Kempegowda Layout, close to 600 acres of land was stuck in a legal dispute for close to 10 years and as a result, many blocks in the layout still do not have proper connectivity and are forced to take roundabouts.
“The BDA could not build connecting roads and even the power lines, the water pipelines, and all of these basic amenities had to be rerouted since a few parcels of lands were not acquired and was stuck in a legal battle. This made it challenging even for the site allottees to construct houses owing to a lack of even the basic amenities,” said A S Suryakiran from the Nadaprabhu Kempegowda Layout (NPKL) Open forum.
Recently, a few residents of the Arkavathy Layout 18th Block also raised a complaint with the Lokayukta that the BDA’s inability to acquire a piece of property in the layout had resulted in the lack of an approach road to the 18th block.
BDA Commissioner Jayaram N, told DH, that there might be a few such cases and BDA is working on solving them.
“Many of the court cases are related to encroached land and people claiming ownership over BDA property. There might be only a few cases where acquisition has caused problems in layouts. We are working towards resolving it,” he said.
While on one hand, the legal hurdles have caused connectivity problems in layouts, on the other hand, hundreds of acres of BDA property remain encroached owing to such delay in resolution of legal cases.
Owing to such hurdles, over the last one year, the officials have been successful in recovering only close to 35 acres of encroached land.“Legal proceedings are time consuming and many of them appeal to higher courts. Hence, it takes time,” Jayaram added.