Huge mounds of soil, removed while digging the borewell, still lie on the stretch in Banashankari II Stage

BENGALURU: A newly sunk borewell at the onset of summer should be good news, but not in Banashankari II Stage where residents are cursing BBMP which took up this exercise. Reason: The borewell has been drilled bang in the middle of the road that links the locality to Thayagarajanagar.

Now left to negotiate the borewell casing pipe , that menacingly juts out of the road surface, residents say the protrusion will soon lead to accidents if the road isn’t relaid to cover it. Huge mounds of soil, removed while digging the borewell, still lie on either side of the stretch.

Kalpana Naganath, a retired bank employee, in front of whose house the casing pipe stands, is now regretting having gone for a movie on March 2 when the BBMP sunk the borewell. She was in the theatre when she received a call from her panicky neighbours.

Kalpana, who rushed home, saw Palike men drilling the borewell in front of her house and asked why this was being done in the middle of the road. “The officials rudely told me that Kuvempu Park across the road was drying up because of lack of water. They said they could strike groundwater source only in the middle of the road in front of my home,” she told TOI.

The officials assured Kalpana that they’d fix the road by evening. “It’s four days now and nothing has happened,” she said.

Local residents said they weren’t consulted by the BBMP before digging the borewell. “We are environment lovers and certainly want the park to look rich and beautiful, but not at the cost of damaging the road,” a resident said.

BBMP officials told TOI the local corporator, Lakshmi Umesh (Ganesh Mandir ward), was kept in the loop and she agreed to have the borewell in the middle of the road.

Residents, however, claimed the corporator was inaccessible and only a few days ago, they had to approach Bangalore South MP Tejasvi Surya to draw the authorities’ attention to uprooting of old trees in the area.

“We are done with our work and will fix the road soon. There are no labourers now. We will fix the road within two days,” a senior BBMP official said.

Corporator Lakshmi Umesh was unavailable for comments.

