BDA appoints 9 SLAOs to acquire land for PRR, starts issuing notices to landowners in Bengaluru

However, farmers are adamant that they wouldn’t give up their land unless compensated under the new law. Notices are being served under Land Acquisition Act, 1894 while farmers want compensation under The Right to Fair Compensation and Transparency in Land Acquisition, Rehabilitation and Resettlement Act, 2013

The Bangalore Development Authority (BDA) has begun serving notices to owners of 1,810 acres of land, notified way back in 2007 for the main carriageway of the Peripheral Ring Road, now renamed Bengaluru Business Corridor (BBC).

These landowners are being served notices asking them to submit their ownership records and file objections, if any, to their land being acquired for the project. This is the first time such notices are being issued for the project’s main component, say farmers. 

This is the most concrete step taken by the BDA towards implementing the project in these many years. On September 5, the State Cabinet decided to implement the project on its own, and not through the Public Private Partnership (PPP) mode. Karnataka has decided to raise loans to the tune of 70% of the project’s cost, now estimated to be around ₹30,000 crore.

With Deputy Chief Minister and Bengaluru Development Minister D. K. Shivakumar spearheading the project, the BDA is keen to move ahead and issue tenders for civil works soon, sources said.  

Jagadish, Deputy Commissioner, Land Acquisition, BDA said they had appointed nine officers as dedicated Special Land Acquisition Officers (SLAOs) for the project. Each officer was made in-charge of acquiring land in all villages along a 8-km stretch of the proposed PRR.

Meanwhile, BDA is all set to issue the final notification for 600 acres of additional land for which preliminary notification was issued in 2022, to build cloverleafs, toll plazas, integrate PRR with NICE Road at Tumakuru Road and Hosur Road junctions, he added. 

Farmers, who have received these notices from the BDA, are upset that the notices have been served under Land Acquisition Act, 1894, and not the existing The Right to Fair Compensation and Transparency in Land Acquisition, Rehabilitation and Resettlement Act, 2013, which replaced it.