BENGALURU: Clearing a major hurdle for 10 development projects in Bengaluru that have been stuck for years owing to defence agencies not parting with land, Defence minister Nirmala Sitharaman said on Saturday that a decision has been taken to immediately allow construction at all these places.

That said, the land that defence establishments and agencies will be parting with won’t come free. The state government has agreed to provide land that is of the same value in another location in exchange.

“The existing rules mandate that the defence gets land that worth the same value. However, what I’ve instructed officials to do, or rather what we’ve decided is that the defence establishments won’t wait until this alternative land is transferred to them before according permission to begin construction,” Sitharaman said.

“...We’ve decided to immediately allow construction activity without delaying development works in the city, and we will later get the land in exchange,” Sitharaman added, while chief minister HD Kumaraswamy thanked her for being proactive.

He said that the Union minister, who represents Karnataka in the Rajya Sabha , had also given him a good audience in Delhi last month where the first round of discussions on the matter happened. On Saturday, Sitharaman and other defence ministry officials met with Kumaraswamy, chief secretary and other state government officials in Vidhana Soudha.

According to the agreement arrived at, the state government would need 11.16 acre of defence land worth an estimated Rs 282 crore to be permanently transferred to its agencies to carry out eight road projects, for which the BBMP has proposed to give 207 acres of land worth Rs 352 crore in Anekal and another 3.2 acres worth Rs 136 crore at Kensington Park and Road area near Ulsoor.

On why the land identified for exchange is worth more than the value of land being taken from the defence establishments, BBMP commissioner N Manjunath Prasad told TOI: “We’ve identified more so that we can exchange it now and seek other defence lands for future projects without a hassle.”

Aside of the eight projects requiring permanent land exchange, permission has also been sought for two railway overbridge projects on 447 sqm of defence land in Maruti Sevanagar and 2.5 acres in Byappanahalli.

Sitharaman said that there were other projects outside of Bengaluru that were discussed but that she could not comment owing to the Election Commission model code of conduct.

