The Karnataka government has approved an 11.62-kilometre (km) elevated corridor cutting through Bengaluru's Indiranagar neighbourhood, triggering a sharp backlash from residents who say they were never consulted.
The Rs 1,300-crore project, to be built by the state-owned Bengaluru Smart Infrastructure Limited (B-SMILE), is meant to ease traffic - but locals fear it will do the opposite, ruining the area's trees and livable conditions.
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The proposed corridor would connect the Swami Vivekananda Road Metro Station on Old Madras Road to Silk Board Junction on Hosur Road. It would pass through Indiranagar's 80 Feet Road, CMH Road, and 100 Feet Road before extending towards Madiwala.
The government's justification is rooted in a domino effect: once the long-pending Ejipura Flyover opens, it is expected to push a surge of traffic into Indiranagar. According to B-SMILE, the new corridor will separate local and long-distance traffic to absorb that pressure.
A timeline that doesn't add up
Critics, however, are questioning the scale and speed of the plan. The Ejipura Flyover is 2.4 kms long, began construction before 2019, and is still not functional. The proposed Indiranagar corridor is five times longer - yet its stated deadline is just 24 months.
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Senior journalist Rasheed Kappan pointed to the troubled history of the Ejipura project as a warning. "The Ejipura Flyover had to go through several contractors because they couldn't - one of them went bankrupt - and that also couldn't be completed on time. There is no guarantee that this will not happen to this project as well. Besides the delay, there are a lot of issues with construction quality," he told The Federal.
The Ejipura Flyover has faced repeated deadline extensions. Having been originally awarded in 2017, its work was stalled midway through construction and was reassigned to a new contractor.
Trees and infra at stake
Beyond the timeline, there are serious concerns about what the new construction would destroy. Indiranagar's 100 Feet Road is considered one of the few genuinely walkable, tree-lined stretches in Bengaluru - a distinction that took decades to earn.
Kappan described what residents stand to lose. "Indiranagar, after suffering years of inconvenience due to road construction and concretisation of the road and tender-show projects, finally got a very decent road which is 100 Feet Road. It is one of the very few walkable, tree-lined stretches of Bangalore that has been done relatively well. Now, it's a stretch which is going to be dug up again. And the consequences of digging up a concrete road are much worse than digging up a tar road. In the process, a lot more trees are going to be cut. The residents of Indiranagar are already afraid that this is going to be a nightmare spread over at least five years," he said.
Critics note that hundreds of fully grown trees - some between 50 and 100 years old - could be lost in the process.
No consultation, no clarity
The deepest grievance among residents is not just the project itself, but the process behind it. Allegations go that no homeowners, shop owners, or places of worship along the route were consulted before the Detailed Project Report (DPR) was finalised.
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Kirana Bhat, a member of the residents' collective 'I Change Indiranagar', called the omission unacceptable. "That's very hurtful, actually, because that is one of the main issues - there has been absolutely no consultation with the stakeholders. And by stakeholders, I mean not just the residents, it's the commercial establishments," she told this website.
She added that the DPR itself leaves critical questions unanswered. "The DPR has a lot of gaps that are remaining unanswered. We want them to justify and tell us how this is beneficial - that aspect is not there at all in the DPR. We want progress, but it has to be meaningful progress," Bhat said.
Residents push back
'I Change Indiranagar' has now hired an independent mobility expert to scrutinise the DPR. Residents say the traffic data in the document is deeply questionable - with no clarity on where, when, or for how long it was collected.
Bhat outlined the group's next steps. "We've reached out to a mobility expert and we are waiting for their inputs to come back to us and tell us the feasibility, the requirement, and all the details about whether this whole project is worth and should be done. After that, we have also started a signature campaign and we have requested - we want to meet the B-SMILE authorities," she said.
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The project is one of eleven flyovers approved by the Karnataka government in April, part of a sweeping infrastructure push for the city. But for Indiranagar's residents, the fight is about more than one corridor - it is about a pattern of top-down decisions made without the people who live with the consequences.
Whether the government chooses to engage or to push ahead will be the real test of how Bengaluru balances growth with governance.
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