When the KIADB was being too NICE for comfort

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When the KIADB was being too NICE for comfort
as reported by Krishnaprasad, The Hindu
The board has acquired excess land of nearly 7,000 acres for the project
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The KIADB notified 21,000 acres of private land as against the
sanctioned 13,237 acres
It also notified 5,688 acres of Government land as against the
sanctioned area of 6,956 acres
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Bangalore: Eleven years after the Frame Work Agreement (FWA) between
the Karnataka Government and the Nandi Infrastructure Corridor
Enterprises (NICE), for implementing the Bangalore-Mysore
Infrastructure Corridor Project (BMICP) was signed, startling
information on the acquisition of excess land for the project has come
into the public domain, thanks to the Right to Information Act.
Excess

It is now established that, over these years, the Karnataka Industrial
Areas Development Board (KIADB) acquired excess land of nearly 7,000
acres for the controversial project in violation of the FWA.
The documents, obtained by many individuals and organisations under
the RTI Act, and in the possession of The Hindu, disclose that the
KIADB, as early as 1998-1999, notified 21,000 acres of private land as
against the sanctioned area of 13,237 acres in the FWA.
Further, the KIADB in 1999 also notified 5,688 acres of Government
land to be given to the project as against the sanctioned area of
6,956 acres in the FWA.
In all, the KIADB agreed to give 26,688 acres of land to NICE instead
of 20,193 acres as agreed to by the Government in the FWA, signed on
April 3, 1997.

'Confidentiality clause'

The reason why these violations by the KIADB were buried all these
years was because of a "confidentiality clause" in the FWA.
The clause reads: "Each party shall hold in strict confidence all
confidential information received by it from the other party. The
party receiving such confidential information shall not publish or
otherwise disclose or use the confidential information for its own
purposes… and shall cause its directors, officers, employees,
servants, agents and contractors to be similarly bound by the
covenants." This silence has now been broken thanks to the RTI Act.
Acting on this new information, the State Government on July 17, 2008,
wrote to the Chief Executive Officer of the KIADB seeking an
explanation on the basis on which these lands were notified and in
some cases, handed over to NICE.
According to the letter, in Section A of the toll road project alone,
the KIADB has notified 12,586 acres of land instead of 6,999 acres
sanctioned.

Section A

Section A comprises 41 km of peripheral road, 9.8 km of link road and
13 km of expressway from Bangalore to Bidadi.
The letter also points out that the KIADB notified 5,675 acres of land
for the peripheral road portion alone as against 2,193 acres required
in the FWA.

Similarly, for the link road, the KIADB has notified 563 acres of land
as against 278 acres required in the FWA. For the expressway, the
KIADB notified 6,348 acres against the requirement of 4,568 acres of
land.

Meeting

However, the Empowered Committee, headed by the Chief Secretary, in
its meeting held on August 5, is said to have delinked the issue of
excess land from the completion of the peripheral road. It is likely
to provide 75 acres of land for its completion, though strictly
speaking these lands too fall in the excess land bracket.

The Hindu : Front Page : When the KIADB was being too NICE for comfort

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