Bengaluru: Asking the Commissioner of the Bruhat Bangalore Mahanagara Palike (BBMP) to “please clean up footpaths of Bangalore for the sake of people,” the High Court of Karnataka on Tuesday directed the Commissioner to initiate action against the chief engineers of the eight zones who failed to fulfil their responsibility of maintaining footpaths.
A Division Bench comprising Chief Justice D.H. Waghela and Justice Budihal R.B issued the direction while making it clear that either disciplinary action should be initiated against them or they should be at least transferred from the positions when they failed to fulfil their public duty.
‘Demolish milk booth’
The Bench, during the hearing of PIL petitions on poor status of footpaths, also asked Commissioner M. Lakshminarayana to initiate action to demolish a milk booth constructed on a pavement at Banashankari that was said to have been constructed following a resolution passed by the BBMP council.
While hearing PIL petitions about noise pollution, the Bench asked the transport authorities to inspect all shops selling horns that were prohibited from use under the law.
Earlier, the court was told that the authorities had inspected 64 shops and had seized around 350 banned horn varieties, while imposing a fine of around Rs. 8 lakh on the sellers.
Model roads
Meanwhile, Mr. Lakshminarayana told the Bench that Cubbon Road, Sankey Road, and Race Course Road had been identified for development as model roads as per the direction issued by the court to develop some roads as model roads. He sought one month to complete the task.
Parking system
The Commissioner also told the Bench that tenders for introducing new parking system on 86 roads would be finalised within a month.
He said the draft tender document had been sent to the Directorate of Urban Land Transport, which had prepared the parking policy.
It would be in the interest of shopkeepers that they should not park their vehicles on the roadside so that the authorised parking space in commercial areas would be used by the shoppers, the Bench observed orally.
