With just months to go for the Assembly elections, Chief Minister Siddaramaiah’s eye seems to be back on Bengaluru. While chairing a high-level city infrastructure review meeting on Monday, he announced that his office would henceforth monitor through a dashboard the progress of all infrastructure projects against milestones on a monthly basis.
Bengaluru Development Minister K.J. George later told reporters that the focus was on completing all the projects within this tenure of the government.
Mr. Siddaramaiah had gone on regular city rounds in the run up to the 2015 civic polls and a few months later as well.
Apart from agency heads, members of the BBMP Restructuring Committee and civic bodies such as Bangalore Political Action Committee were part of the meeting. Sources said each agency made a 10-minute presentation on the status of various projects. “While no officer or agency was pulled up for any delay, the timelines committed to were noted and [they] were asked to break it down to monthly milestones and furnish details for the dashboard. The CM will chair review meetings every month from now on,” an official said.
While it was decided that bus priority lanes were not feasible, the authorities decided to speed up commissioning of two waste-to-energy plants and sewage treatment plants.
On steel flyover
Meanwhile, Mr. George said the government was committed to building a steel flyover at Shivananda Circle, despite severe opposition from locals. “If the residents oppose the flyover, they should provide alternative solutions to ease the traffic bottleneck,” he said.