Bidadi township: Govt readies innovative relief package

The Knowledge City project, proposed on 6,959 acre of private land and 2725 acre of government land, 39 km from Bangalore, is intended to create an urban environment to ease the pressure on Bangalore. The compensation package proposed in a Cabinet note by the government features three options: cash for land, developed land for acquired land and a mixture of cash and land.

Under the cash for land scheme, compensation ranging from Rs 20 to Rs 25 lakh per acre has been proposed, depending on the type of land and its location. The Commerce and Industries Ministry has objected to this proposal saying the cash compensation “varies from Rs 20 to Rs 25 lakh for guidance values ranging from Rs 1.60 lakh to Rs 22.50 lakh”.

“If this is treated as a benchmark for land acquisition, it will be virtually impossible to acquire land by paying such abnormally high prices over the guidance values,” the Commerce and Industries Department has stated in its observations on the Cabinet note.

Under the developed land for acquired land package, a proposal has been made to allot land losers 8,000 square feet of developed land—of the developers choice—within the project area for every acre of agricultural land acquired. The department has warned that the proposal “to give 8,000 sq ft of developed land per acre uniformly to all land owners will appear discriminatory as the price of land depends on location and fertility”.

Despite objections from within the government, the Bangalore Metropolitan Region Development Authority (BMRDA), the implementers of the project on the government’s side, expressed confidence of seeing the project through. “This is the CM’s constituency. Nothing will stand in the way of ensuring the best package for the farmers in the constituency. We have estimated Rs 600 crore to be the compensation costs,” a senior BMRDA official said.

“We will not advice the farmers on what package they should opt for, though the land for land may be the best bet in the long term. Big farmers can go in for a mix of cash and land compensation,” an official said.

When survey for the project began earlier this year some farmer groups raised objections against the acquisition of fertile land, leading to a petition against the project in the Karnataka High Court. The new compensation was then worked out at the behest of the Chief Minister in March. The Commerce and Industries Department, however, issued a point- by-point reaction to the proposal on April 24.

“The compensation is a key step in taking the project to the next stage of negotiations with the developers who will finally be awarded the project,” an official said.

Of a total of five township projects, measuring 60,961 acre, proposed around Bangalore, two are located in Kumaraswamy’s constituency. A third township proposed under the Bangalore-Mysore Infrastructure Corridor Project by the Nandi Infrastructure Corridor Enterprise is also located in Ramanagaram. The average compensation package for the decade-old BMIC project, currently mired in a series of legal battles, is an average of Rs 10 lakh per acre.