3 min readBengaluruJan 14, 2023 11:30 AM IST
First published on: Jan 13, 2023 at 07:15 PM IST
In a statement issued Friday, the Bengaluru NavaNirmana Party (BNP) opposed Bruhat Bengaluru Mahanagara Palike’s (BBMP) move to call tenders to widen the Sankey Tank Bund Road and demanded the civic body to suspend the tendering process and review the necessity for the same.
A statement from the BNP read, “BBMP has floated a tender to widen the Sankey Tank Bund Road without consulting the public and has not published any Detailed Project Report (DPR) for the project. The BBMP has not justified the project’s merits. Floating a tender hastily for a road widening project on the eve of the state Assembly election shows that the BBMP is being run arbitrarily along with wasting taxpayers’ money.”
It added, “It will also worsen the network traffic situation in the area through this ill-conceived project. Why is the BBMP so desperate to widen the Sankey Tank Bund Road, which does not help to ease any traffic congestion but rather destroys the huge green cover around the area and compounds the traffic congestion? The proposal has already elicited strong public opposition and outrage. Axing close to 40 trees to widen one kilometre of road is pointless.”
“It is a well known fact that road widening projects are always counterproductive and only shifts the problem elsewhere on the network besides attracting even more traffic. This project is BBMP’s deliberate move to pander to the vested lobbies and to inflict continued misery to the honest tax paying citizens. We demand that the BBMP immediately suspend the tendering procedure and review the necessity for the project since it was first conceived a decade ago when awareness of transport demand measures was not prevalent,” it further said.
The BBMP in December 2022 had revived the proposal to widen Sankey Road from Bhashyam Circle to Malleshwaram 18th Cross. It had also proposed to construct a flyover along the Sankey Road in Malleshwaram constituency in an attempt to reduce traffic congestion in the area.
An online petition on Jhatkaa.org against the move currently has over 6,000 signatures. On January 12, a group of citizens visited the BBMP office and met the BBMP chief commissioner, Tushar Giri Nath, and demanded to suspend the tender process.
“There seems to be a misconception that flyovers are the solution to Bangalore’s traffic problems. But a flyover will just take you to the next congested intersection quickly. We need more scientific and economically sound solutions for these issues. We don’t know on what basis a flyover was chosen to be the best possible solution for this issue. And thousands of Bangaloreans are asking the same question,” said Divya Narayanan, campaigns director, Jhatkaa.org.
A statement from the BNP read, “BBMP has floated a tender to widen the Sankey Tank Bund Road without consulting the public and has not published any Detailed Project Report (DPR) for the project." 
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