KJ George scores just 11 out of 33 in Whitefield projects tracker

BENGALURU: Citizen group Whitefield Rising is holding City Development Minister KJ George to his word. In a new approach, the group is tracking the status of 33 civic projects. Till date, only 11 have been either completed or in progress.

Specific deadlines were set for these 33 projects in a meeting George and government officials held with Whitefield Rising on May 26. Ever since then, the status tracker has kept a tab on every single project. These projects include road improvement, lake development, solid waste management and public transport.

For instance, George had BMTC managing director Ekroop Caur commit to June 30 as the deadline to procure 500 mini buses to address hyper-local movement within Whitefield. BDA commissioner Rakesh Singh had a June 2 deadline for a meeting with a philanthropist to accord approvals for investment for Varthur lake. Bengaluru East tehsildar Tejas was to ensure eviction of encroachers from Narayanapura road by June 27.

Their Status: Not done.

"We ourselves were not efficient in the way we engaged with the authorities. The objective is to gain operational efficiency in the problem areas that exist," said a Whitefield Rising volunteer coordinating the effort. He declined to be identified "because the status tracker is a team effort." The group also hopes that the status tracker will serve as a data repository of civic projects.

Going forward, the single tracker will be used to track projects, periodic updates of which will be sent to government officials and citizens."This is a new approach and will hopefully yield better results compared to the past," the group said on its website. Members plan to bring out a mobile app. "The tracker still needs manual entry of project details but we have automated generation of reports. For example, we can generate a report for every officer tasked with projects," the volunteer said.

BBMP special commissioner (projects) BM Vijay Shankar has 11 projects, of which six are unfinished.

"Look, I'm special commissioner for the entire city," Shankar fretted at first. "We're addressing issues of Whitefield on a war-footing but our officials are under pressure to attend other issues as well. I'm personally monitoring issues in Borewell Road, Nallurhalli and Thubarahalli.You'll see a lot of work on the ground from next week," he said.

Citizens are in touch with MLC Rizwan Arshad, who liaises between them and George's office. Both were unavailable for comment.