Bangalore's Sampige Road will soon be wider by 8m

Malleswaram residents as well as commuters here can soon expect a smooth ride. Sampige Road, which had become a bottleneck after the Mantri Square mall opened, will be widened.

The work will be taken up in 15 days, said H Ravindra, standing committee (major works) chairman, Bruhat Bangalore Mahanagara Palike (BBMP), who made the announcement after observing traffic congestion on the stretch.

“Due to the construction of the Mantri mall, traffic on the road has increased from 6,500 passenger car units (PCU) to nearly 10,000 PCU per hour. This has become a major road block. So the road, which is 25m broad now, will be widened by 4m on both sides,” he said.

The ramp constructed in front of the Mantri mall will also be demolished. “A few trees in front of the mall will be chopped to make way for the road”, said a BBMP official.

The stretch from Sampige Road to Srirampura in front of Savitha theatre will also be widened to ease traffic flow. With road widening, the compound wall of Mantri Greens apartments will also be demolished.

The property near the Mantri mall, Jeevan Bima Nigam, Sampige theatre and Savitha theatre will be taken over by providing TDR to the owners.

An official said that as the BBMP decided to widen the road, Mantri Greens constructed a Chamundeshwar temple inside the compound. “This was done to prevent the BBMP from demolishing the temple. But we know their intention. We will demolish the temple”, said the official, requesting anonymity.

“While issuing occupancy certificate, conditions had been laid that a road has to constructed by Mantri at the rear of the property. Mantri has violated that condition by not constructing the road till now,” said Ravindra.

Mantri officials said they were waiting for the BMRCL to complete the Metro station before constructing the road. But Ravindra pointed out that the proposal to construct a rear road was agreed to way back in December 2009.

Ravindra directed the deputy director (town planning) to suspend the partial occupancy certificate issued to the Mantri Developers.
Committee member S Harish asked Mantri officials where they were dumping the mud excavated for the construction of the Metro station and residential and commercial complex. A Mantri official said they had permission from the BBMP to dump the mud at Hennur Bande between 10pm and 5am.

But corporator B Govindaraju of HBR Layout ward, under which Hennur Bande comes, said he had no knowledge about anyone dumping mud in his ward. “Actually there is no place in my ward to dump excavated mud. Mantri officials are not speaking the truth,”  he said.

An irked Harish ordered  officials to provide him details on how much excavation has been done, and where the excavated mud had been dumped all these days.