EXPRESS EXPOSE---NICE sitting on 7,000 acres excess land

NICE sitting on 7,000 acres excess land

Express News Service

First Published : 15 Jul 2009 04:14:00 AM IST

Last Updated :

BANGALORE: Twelve years after the Framework Agreement (FWA) between the Government of Karnataka and the Nandi Infrastructure Corridor Enterprise (NICE) to implement the Bangalore-Mysore Infrastructure Corridor Project (BMICP) was signed, startling information on the acquisition of excess land for the project has come into the public domain, thanks to the Right to Information Act.It is now established that over these years, the Karnataka Industrial Areas Development Board (KIADB) acquired excess land of nearly 7,000 acres for the controversial project in violation of the FWA.The documents, obtained by many individuals and activists under the RTI Act, and in the possession of Express, disclose that the KIADB, as early as 1998-1999, notified 21,000 acres of private land as against the sanctioned area of 13,237 acres in FWA.These docume nts have been compiled into a book titled “White Paper on BMICP fraud” published by the Dalit Sangharsha Samiti The KIADB, in 1999, notified 5,688 acres of government land to be given to the project as against the sanctioned area of 6,956 acres in the FWA. In all, the KIADB agreed to give 26,688 acres of land to NICE instead of 20,193 acres as agreed in the FWA.Section A comprises 41 km of peripheral road, 9.8 km of link road and 13 km of expressway from Bangalore to Bidadi.The documents also point out that KIADB notified 5,675 acres for peripheral road portion alone as against 2,193 acres required in FWA.For the link road, the KIADB has notified 563 acres of land as against 278 acres required in the FWA. For the expressway, KIADB notified 6,348 acres against the requirement of 4,568 acres of land.The NICE spokesperson said, “The expert panel formed to study this issue has given clear guidance. We are following the same. All allegations are baseless.The matter is still in the court and we will adhere to the court orders given earlier.” Clause misused All these years, officials have buried these violations under the confidentiality clause in the FWA. The clause says, “Each party shall hold in strict confidence all confidential information received by it from the other party. The party receiving such confidential information shall not publish or otherwise disclose or use the confidential information for its own purposes.” Thanks to RTI activists and farmers, the issue came out in the open. Acting on this, the government on July 17, 2008, wrote to the chief executive officer of KIADB seeking explanation about the basis on which these lands were notified and in some cases, given to NICE.In Section A alone, KIADB has notified 12,586 acres of land instead of 6,999 acres sanctioned. The then special DC had said that KIADB had admitted that land acquisition notifications were issued based on requirement indicated by promoter company and not on the basis of any technical drawings approved by the government or PWD or the FWA.

BJP discovers ‘neighbourly’ Pak

For a change, the BJP is not calling for war against Pakistan after the Mumbai attacks and has instead asked the government to bring international pressure on the neighbour.

The reason could be the general election that is only months away, sources said.

A statement issued after the BJP’s core committee meeting here tonight was shorn of pet phrases such as “hot pursuit” and did not sound like the party at all.

It condemned Pakistan for using terror as an instrument of state policy but didn’t call for military action, not even air strikes to destroy militant training camps in Pakistan-occupied Kashmir.

The BJP requested Pakistan to abandon the “perilous road” of confrontation and “observe at least an elementary code of neighbourly conduct”. The statement said: “To Pakistan, we say: Do not please violate the commitment of January 6, 2004, also of all the UN resolutions and international opinions on terrorism.”

The polite appeal came from a party that has in the past threatened to teach Pakistan a lesson at the slightest provocation. Former Prime Minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee had talked of “aar-paar ki larai” and sent troops to the border. “Hot pursuit” has for years been the favourite phrase of L.K. Advani, who hopes to become Prime Minister in 2009.

BJP leaders Jaswant Singh and Arun Shourie today justified the restraint, saying military options could not be talked about in news conferences. They said the “nationalist” BJP would stand by the government if it took “stern steps to ensure that Pakistan desists from jihadi terrorism.”

But at a time the national mood is jingoistic, the BJP’s caution is surprising. While there is a view that the six-year stint in government has made the party more responsible, another explanation is that the party is afraid any military action will hurt it in the election.

The party believes in this atmosphere of public anger, a military strike on terror camps would only benefit the ruling Congress.

With the general election due in months, this is not something the BJP would want.

That the party has polls on its mind was given away by this paragraph in the resolution: “The BJP believes that the ultimate solution only lies with the people: they must ensure that power rests in the hands of persons who will always place the interests of our country above all else, who will never barter them for electoral gains.”

BJP president Rajnath Singh, who often sounds more strident than his party on every issue, also spoke of the need to bring international pressure on Pakistan.

Source: SANJAY K. JHA-The Telegraph

Poor Acharya

One question I’m dying to ask Dr V.S. Acharya

The sort of disrepute Shivaraj Patil has brought the Congress-led UPA government at the Centre in four years, V.S. Acharya has brought the BJP government in Karnataka in four months flat. The mumbling, fumbling, blogging home minister has been caught with his pants down so many times in the fledgling days of the B.S. Yediyurappa government, it beggars belief.

When farmers were protesting fertiliser shortages, the god-fearing physician from Udupi was blissfully doing a whirlwind tour of temples and mutts. When BJP MLA Raghupati Bhat’s wife Padmapriya Bhat was “half-kidnapped”, Acharya was dropping red herrings that she was suffering from”temporary depression” and that “she would be re-united with her family in matter of hours” only to report the young woman’s murky death a few hours later.

The curfew on live music and the disenchantment over the transfers of police officers even among BJP legislators have all shown up Acharya to be a comical Sancho Panza tilting at the windmills of competence while his chief minister promises “good governance” with a scowl.

However, none of those fleeting brushes with infamy come close to Dr Acharya’s mind-numbing performance in the week gone by, when Karnataka’s well-earned reputation as a peaceful, civilised State has been dealt a killer-blow by the Hindutva Hitsquads.

When the State was looking for a statesman when churches and prayer halls were attacked on the West Coast by the Bajrang Dal, Dr Acharya was happy to play partisan politics, linking it to the conversion debate, as if it is not the State’s business (and his job description) to protect the lives, property and freedoms of all citizens, irrespective of their community, even if they are converts from Hinduism. And now, his inability to quell further attacks on churches in Bangalore today, a day after the Centre invoked Article 355.

What is the one question you are dying to ask Dr V.S. Acharya? “Doctor, heal thyself?

Source:Churmuri.com