BENGALURU: The Ejipura-Koramangala flyover’s progress — from drawing board to reality — is a perfect example of bureaucratic apathy and redtapism undermining well-intentioned infrastructure projects.Slated to be completed in April 2020, the project had a delayed start as different government agencies failed to give the go-ahead on time. While traffic police took five months to clear the 2.4km flyover billed to resolve one of the most knotty traffic gridlocks in the city, civil police took 273 days to give permission for controlled blasting.The flyover’s pace of progress has touched off a Twitter debate. While Biocon MD Kiran Mazumdar-Shaw tweeted stating the project is behind schedule by a year, former home minister Ramalinga Reddy, who represents BTM Layout constituency and under whose jurisdiction the under-construction flyover falls, said that’s not the case.Civic officials, however, say they are adhering to the 36-month project deadline given to the contractor to complete all works, including the construction of piers (pillars), capping and asphalting.TOI had on November 13, 2018, published in these columns, a report, “Tardy progress of Ejipura-Koramangala flyover tests commuters’ patience”, highlighting how the project could take up to two years to complete.BBMP’s executive engineer (project) Nadeem Ahmed claimed the project is running as per schedule. Everybody has the right to say anything in media without ascertaining facts, he added.He claimed the contractor was issued a work order on May 4, 2017 to take up work execution, but traffic police delayed giving clearance by another five months. After police gave permission on October 6, 2017, the pier-testing work took another two months.Nadeem said the civic agency has to acquire around 8,000 sq ft land to give the final touches to the flyover. “We have to acquire 49 properties, including around 5,000 sq ft area of St. Johns Hospital and hostels, a property belonging to the central public works department (CPWD) and 948 sq ft area of Indian Institute of Astrophysics campus. About 1,630 sq ft of property belonging to private individuals have to be acquired and BBMP has decided to pay a compensation of around Rs 9,300 per sq m as the owners have declined compensation in the form of transfer of development rights, he maintained.Meanwhile, chief engineer (projects) KT Nagaraj said work is on in full swing and the project would be completed around April 7, 2020. “So far, around 39 of the 81 piers have come up, while 241 of the 305 pilings have been completed. The project was initially delayed due to traffic police delaying permission to take up the work, but work was being undertaken without any traffic diversion,” he said.The flyover along the 100ft Inner Ring Road will ease traffic between Ejipura Main Road–Inner Ring Road Junction and Hosur Road Junction near Kendriya Sadana.

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