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From safe city to solving traffic chaos: Karnataka Governor Thaawarchand Gehlot’s 2-line address misses out Rs 1.7-lakh crore plans for Bengaluru

Karnataka Governor Thaawarchand Gehlot walked out of the Assembly on Thursday after reading just two lines of his customary address to the legislature prepared by the Cabinet.

3 min readBengaluruUpdated: Jan 22, 2026 07:00 PM IST

The speech, prepared by the Cabinet for Governor Thaawarchand Gehlot, was supposed to talk up the Government's efforts to reduce traffic congestion in Bengaluru. (File Photo)

Governor Thaawarchand Gehlot on Thursday delivered just two lines of his address to the Karnataka legislature—a speech that was to outline the Government’s ambitious plans to tackle Bengaluru’s traffic crisis and achievements it wanted to highlight.

The speech, prepared by the Cabinet for Gehlot, was supposed to talk up the Government’s efforts to reduce traffic congestion in Bengaluru, ranked as the second-worst traffic-hit city in the world by The TomTom traffic index recently.

The speech read, “Approval has been accorded for Bengaluru Metro Phase-III, a 44.65 km project with an estimated cost of Rs 15,611 crore. As part of this project, the State Government has approved the country’s first double-decker project combining road and metro, at a cost of Rs 9,700 crore, on the corridor from Hosahalli to Kadabagere. The Detailed Project Report (DPR) for the 36.59 km-long Metro PhaseIIIA project from Sarjapura to Hebbal has been approved and submitted to the Central Government.”

The speech also dwelt upon the development of Greater Bengaluru. “Works worth Rs 1.7 lakh crore have been taken up, including metro, tunnel roads, business corridors, whitetopping, bridges, road surfacing, bus stations, park development, water supply, underground drainage projects, sewage treatment plants, solid waste management, lake-filling projects, IT and innovative city development, double-decker roads, elevated corridors, construction of rajakaluves and other drains, suburban railway, and related works,” it said.

The speech further said it was a matter of pride that the quality of water supplied by the Bengaluru Water Supply and Sewerage Board had been certified by the Bureau of Indian Standards. “In addition, the use of Artificial Intelligence technology is helping to prevent large-scale water leakage,” it read.

‘Safest city for women’
The speech also highlighted a recent report that ranked Bengaluru as the safest city for women in the country. It was prepared by a Chennai-based consultancy dealing in workplace culture and inclusion.

The speech read, “By treating and reusing wastewater to fill lakes in Kolar, Chikkaballapur, Bengaluru Urban, and Bengaluru Rural districts, the State has created a new model, which has been appreciated by the leadership of the United Nations. In collaboration with the Azim Premji Foundation, an agreement has been entered into to establish a 1,000-bed multi-organ transplant charitable hospital on 10 acres of land near Rajiv Gandhi Institute of Chest Diseases, Bengaluru.”

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The speech further said the Government had taken up an ambitious project to expand the work of treating water from KC Valley and HN Valley and filling lakes, as well as to treat water from the Vrishabhavathi Valley and fill lakes. In the first phase, processes have been initiated for filling water into 70 lakes across Bengaluru Urban, Bengaluru Rural, and Tumakuru districts at a cost of Rs 1,081 crore, it added.

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