The not so NICE road is nightmarish now

The NICE peripheral road is turning into an anomaly of sorts as commuters are finding it difficult to traverse through the expressway. For a week now, traffic on the peripheral road stretches linking Mysore Road-Tumkur Road and Mysore Road-Bannerghatta Road have ground to a halt, what with farmers protesting against alleged excess land acquisition resorting to road blockades.

The Nandi Infrastructure Corridor Enterprise (NICE), meanwhile, is losing  lakhs of rupees in the form of toll fees collected from the vehicles. The aggrieved company has shot off a letter to the state government demanding its intervention to resolve the issue.

In a letter addressed to chief secretary SV Ranganath, home secretary Abhijit Das Gupta, Central range IGP Kamal Panth and others, the NICE has said:  “We are constrained to write to you in view of the recent unfortunate developments on our peripheral road between Kanakapura Road and Mysore Road near Hemmigepura village. As you are aware, Janata Dal (Secular) workers have blocked the traffic near Hemmigepura and are holding a protest… We have filed a complaint with the Talaghattapura police. But no action has been taken so far.”
Pointing out that the Supreme Court had in clear terms deprecated political interference in the project and directed the state government to expedite the project implementation, NICE said that a frustrated JD(S) national president HD Deve Gowda had now resorted to engineering the current blockade.