IIJNM :: Investigations_slum

(A bungling relocation process ....continued)

The board, however, defended the project’s funding procedure. “There have been minor scheme provision violations, however, it is impossible to get land for people according to their wish in a city like Bangalore,” said Sannachittaiah, technical director of KSCB. He also said that initially, when the board was making DPRs, there was a shortage of staff to handle such a vast project, hence incomplete DPR’s were sent to the Central government.

Pooviah of CIVIC said only technical details of the construction materials to be used were described in the funding requests. “It is interesting how the board got funding passed with these inadequate details,” he said.

Now, the KSCB says the 540 houses in Sadarmangala near Hudi circle will have slum dwellers from another area that were not mentioned in the original DPR.

Sadarmangala is government appointed relocation site. The site has 560 newly constructed houses, which were built by the state at a cost of almost Rs 10 crores, according to documents provided by the board. The complexes were built under the Jawaharlal Nehru National Urban Rural Mission (JNNURM) project’s Basic Service for Urban Poor (BSUP) scheme, which was introduced in 2006. Its proposed deadline is 2012, by which time 59 Bangalore slums identified for rehabilitation will be shifted into new housing.

A High Court order was passed in the year 1998 stating that ISRO slum in Shantinagara is on military land and needs to be vacated. The slum was then selected under the BSUP scheme in the year 2006.