Bengaluru's Basaveshwara Circle-Hebbal flyover plan may be junked

BENGALURU: The Bangalore Development Authority ( BDA) is planning to drop the idea of building the 6.9-km six-lane elevated road from the Basaveshwara Circle to Hebbal. The project was meant to improve connectivity to the international airport.

Only two firms, Larsen & Toubro and Navayuga Group, have been shortlisted through a tender process that opened September last. The `1,350-crore project, however, is being edged out by a bigger elevated corridor project which, planners believe, will make the former redundant.

“We will drop the Basaveshwara Circle-Hebbal flyover elevated road project if this stretch is included in the bigger project that is on the anvil,“ BDA Commissioner T Sham Bhat told ET.

Bhat was referring to the 75-km north-south-east-west corridor, pegged at `18,400 crore. It is to connect Central Silk Board to Hebbal (north-south corridor), KR Puram to Gorguntepalya (east-west corridor-1) and Jnanabharathi to Varthur Kodi (east-west corridor-2) with six-lane elevated roads. These corridors will also have three connecting corridors. Once ready, the project's promoters claim commuters can travel to any part of the city under 45 minutes.

The talk of cancelling the six-lane elevated road project figured in a recent meeting with Chief Secretary Arvind Jadhav . “We have urged that this project be dropped. There is no need to spend thousands of crores when another project would take care of the need. Besides, the sixlane elevated road would only replicate the traffic mess at Hebbal in Basaveshwara Circle,“ said RK Misra, a member of the BBMP's Technical Advisory Committee.

Bhat added that the BDA was at the receiving end of complaints that building the six-lane elevated road would spoil the city's beauty.

The elevated road would go above the Windsor Manor bridge, the grade separator on T Chowdaiah Road and descend just before the Hebbal flyover. “The plan is to provide loops to the Vidhana Soudha, Kumara Krupa Road, Cauvery junction, Mekhri Circle and Sanjay Nagar. We'll also need to acquire land in Raj Bhavan and the official residence of the High Court Chief Justice,“ he said.

Technical evaluation of the bids made by L&T and Navayuga are underway, said BDA executive engineer Vijayakumar R.

However, with the project's fate hanging in balance, Vijayakumar did not have a clear answer on when the project would take off.